Miles To Go
by The Cat's Whiskers
Summary: Set post Shadows. What if John Winchester was a good father after all? As always, feedback requested.
1. Chapters 1 & 2

_**Disclaimer:** _The TV show _Supernatural_ and all characters therein are owned by assorted Americans, not me. This fiction is purely for the enjoyment of readers; no money is being made. All Original Characters remain the property of Catherine D. Stewart and may not be used without the express permission of the authoress.

**_Summary: _**Maybe John Winchester wasn't a bad father…maybe he _knew_ what he was doing…

_**Rating:** _'T'/15 because of the odd fruity phase, but there is no gore, graphic or gratuitous infliction of suffering, violence, sex, etc. **Please note** for the purposes of this story that I have assumed 'Dean' and 'Sam' are the same ages as Jensen Ackles (b.1st March 1978) and Jared Padalecki (b.19th July 1982). Considering that Jensen is 2 years younger than my 'Sam', who also faced dire infant peril (of the medical kind) and Jared is the same age as my youngest cousin who still calls me 'Auntie' Catherine, I shall attempt to forget these facts as soon as possible.

**MILES TO GO BEFORE I SLEEP**

**Chapter 1**

_Boom! Boom!_

"Dean, reload!"

Dean was already waaaay ahead of Sammy on that one. It was why he was carrying not one but _two _12-gauges _and_ a sawn-off fully loaded with rock-salt…soaked in Holy Water (Sam's impressive idea for double-whammy…now if only they could set the stuff on fire as they shot it they'd be three-for-three). Dean's conviction that it was not possible to ever have_ too_ _many_ large-calibre guns within grabbing distance was so far paying off. A quick boom-boom-boom rocked the fugly enough for you to reload and boom-boom-boom again.

At least it _had_ until about five seconds ago. Dean had no idea what the thing was and didn't really care; it was humanoid only in basic body shape, smelled like a sewer and had jaws like Jaws plus six-inch claws with which it was attempting to eviscerate anything within range. Fortunately it was also dense enough for light to bend round it, as evinced by the thing's manic attempt to disembowel a nearby tree, the tough bark of which had caused actual _sparks _to fly from the aforementioned claws. The ancient oak was largely impervious to the impertinence but now the damn thing had finally got itself oriented facing them and its single-celled-brain had just made the connection between all its current stress issues and physical pain and the two little human males and those metal things that went bang-bang.

_If you go down - to the woods today…you're in - for a big surprise! _Dean hummed the verse to himself he and Sam nimbly darted around tree trunks and sturdy saplings and kept up the barrage. This little supernatural Gunfight at the O.K. Corral hadn't been planned. Sam had been asleep in the passenger seat and Dean doing his usual driving at speeds measured in warp factors, (badly) singing along to some classic Def Leppard as they drove through the backwoods of rural New Hampshire, when the EMF detector in the holdall on the back seat had squawked like a frightened chicken. Typical that Samuel Winchester who could sleep through five hours of full-on Metallica and probably a missile barrage right outside his bedroom snapped awake the instant the tiny EMF that Dean had jury-rigged from an old Walkman so much as whimpered.

What _weren't_ typical were the readings the thing had been giving. The last time it had gone that far off the scale had been the whole pagan nightmare where Dean had been within a whisker of being killed as a fertility sacrifice to a Norse Vanir. Considering how long it had been even _then_ since he'd got laid, _that_ would have been a huge cosmic bad joke.

Dean and Sam fired again simultaneously right into its face, their ears ringing from the shriek. Taking all their weaponry as a precaution and following the EMF signal had proven prudent when the Chomp Thing had lumbered towards them like a freight train from the woods – obviously the isolated area was the reason why it had failed to register on any radar or do so little damage….Something it was now trying to make up for.

"_SAM!_" By the time his conscious mind had processed the sight of Sam's slip on an exposed sapling root, Dean was already there.

Pain exploded down his left side as he put himself between his brother and the Bad, but it didn't even slow him down. Over the years pain exploding in various body parts had become par for the course as he was bashed, banged, thumped, thrown, slashed, sliced, dinged, diced, whomped, stomped and generally kicked into next week by the über-evil of the moment.

Despite the abrupt and highly inconvenient floppiness of his left-side limbs, Dean rolled forward smoothly and from a prone position braced the stock of the shotgun against the solid supporting muscles of his right thigh and fired again with that hand into the thing's face from point-blank range.

Happily this time the impact sent the thing falling flat on its back and that was that; in modern America, carrying about t a six-foot-long sacred sword took some explaining sometimes, but when you needed a blade whose forging had been cooled in Holy Water and that had been polished with rock salt and blessed by a living saint it was worth it. In an instant Sam brought the blade down with all his upper body strength and reptilian neck cartilage that should have shattered the blade into toothpick slivers instead proved to be about as deflective as butter against a heated knife.

Which was a pretty good thing, considering. The pain was refusing to wait politely in the queue for its turn and was instead bullying its way into his lungs and shoving in line at his spine. Dean was aware that Sam was kneeling next to him. His brother's mouth was moving but no sound was coming out. Dean frowned as he saw that Sam's face was wet even as Sam started pulling him and tugging him – _hello, not helping to lessen the searing agony, dude! _– and despite the pain he tried to sit up. It wasn't right when Sammy was upset…and he couldn't bear to see him cry. He had to make it better, it was what he _did_. Dean blinked rapidly, amazed at the speed with which the fog had come down as he tried to focus on Sam…

**Chapter 2**

Dean thought again about opening his eyes. But his lids were still far too heavy for him to lift…and to be honest that fact didn't bother him in the slightest, though it probably should have caused a _teensy_ bit of concern he supposed. However, he was just too warm and snugly to really be bothered somehow…

Not that his warm and snugly was a total utopia, he had to admit. There was his mouth, for a start. It was drier than prairie grass during Texas mid-summer and he had the most horrible taste in his mouth, like a member of the skunk family had crawled inside and died on his tongue. There again though, it wasn't enough to impinge on his toasty, fuzzy cocoon.

Dean thought about it some more and remembered that the only time he'd been this mellow and floaty and…that word… 'S'…Sammy…no Sammy wasn't it. Sammy was the dwarf…whatchmacallit…Grumpy…Sarasota? No… that was some place…down in….someplace. Sir? Nope, that was dad…_serene_…yeah that was it. Serene. When had he been this mellow and floaty and serene…oh yeah, the first time he'd been drunk – really drunk…about ten seconds before the hangover kicked in and his gut got its revenge for him mixing tequila and snowballs with 3:00am Korean takeaway and forced him to spend the morning with his head in the toilet bowl.

That wasn't an option though, since the first time he'd ever been drunk was also the _last_ time he'd ever been drunk. It had been the closest dad had ever come to actually hitting either of them…Where had it been now? No recollection came, just some anonymous college town with a boisterous frat-boy population and one more crappy motel room with that funky smell such places always seemed to have and seriously psychedelic wallpaper …He'd only been thirteen and had wheedled his way into some college party dive where most everyone else was already too out of it to comprehend that one of the guests wasn't merely vertically challenged but a _kid_.

Dad had been furious when he'd swaggered/staggered back to the motel in the small hours; though probably for the fact that a barely adolescent roaring drunk would focus unwelcome official attention in their direction than any actual concern for Dean himself, he thought now still without any great concern over what should have been a painful memory. It had been the first time _he'd_ ever done any yelling back though too, which was kind of a point of honour. Dad had yelled about responsibility and safety and then made the mistake of bringing up Dean's age…at that point Dean's blooming sarcastic skills had taken over; most thirteen-year-olds weren't hardened killers who knew more about decapitation than the hockey scores…

In every way other than ignorable biology he wasn't a child…couldn't remember when he had been…so why should he allow others to apply those rules to him for _their _convenience but not _his_? See, though he didn't have Sam's genius-IQ he wasn't totally as thick as a brick! Besides, maybe _Dean_ should do the hunting while Dad tried spending days on end cooped up in a sleazy motel room with an eight-year-old Einstein made stir crazy because the trash on motel TV nourished his intellect about as much as week-old lettuce? All the time wondering if _this_ was the day John Winchester wasn't going to walk back _in _the door because he was dead in a ditch somewhere. _Lecturing me on responsibility may not be the tack to take when you're a guy living in a glasshouse, Dad! In fact, why don't you look after Sammy for a change, 'cause I am out of here!'_

Dean remembered the way it had seemed almost like slo-mo as his dad's hand had curled into a tight fist and he'd braced himself for the blow…never landed of course…Sammy had saved him – the little squirt had run from his hiding in the bathroom when Dean had taken a single step towards the motel room door and wrapped himself limpet-like round his brother's knee. Impossible, to countenance Sammy's pain, and he had fallen to his knees on that grime-fest carpet and let Sammy half-throttle him with the hugging as he apologised for yelling and assured Sammy that he wouldn't leave…Sammy hadn't even seemed to notice that dad was even there and now Dean recalled that funny look on dad's face…a mixture of resignation and hurt, because Sammy had only cared that _Dean_ would not leave him…

Two days later dad had gone on another 'I swear I won't be long' hunting trip and the first night they were alone Sammy had hugged that big book he'd found in one of the drawers – Mark Twain it was – tightly to his chest like a shield…the thing had been nearly as big as him…and timidly told Dean that he didn't mind if Dean wanted to go out and be with his friends…Sammy would be perfectly alright staying in the motel room until he got back, with his book…oh sure, and the shaking voice and terrified eyes were barely noticeable…

_I wonder if that's why Sammy** really** went off to college…_the thought popped into his brain from someplace…_not so much because he was desperate for that normal life he's always going on about, but because ever since that night he's had some crazy idea that by leaving he was freeing me from the burden of him…Idiot_, Dean thought affectionately, _genius IQ and still got the sense of a seam squirrel…Sammy, Sammy…so smart but so dim…didn't you ever realise…? Like that song, dude…The story of my life, Is very easy to read, It starts when you came, And it ends when you leave…me._

What had he been thinking about? That was another downside to warm and snugly…you tended to lose track of…thingie…whatsit…not plane, he hated planes, he had no control on a plane – now the Impala, his Black Beauty was his to command…yeah…went tcha-ch-tcha…on rails…_train…_that was it, train of thought…_I've lost my choo-choo…_Dean decided…

Being drunk, that was it. The closest he'd ever experienced to this level of fogginess was when he was drunk…but he'd never been drunk since. Not just 'cause of dad's anger though…Spending six straight hours with your head close-up-and-personal to a fleapit motel room toilet bowl as your stomach brought up everything you'd _ever _eaten was an experience most definitely to be missed; plus the fact was, being the only sober guy in the bar had been a real eye-opener, watching the risible stupidity of the drunken and the stoned and marvelling at the fact that anyone thought such a state was a _good_ thing to regularly visit.

So…what did that mean? _Not drunk_…right. So if he wasn't drunk why did he feel so nice and cuddly-cosy? This state of being was certainly artificial...Dean couldn't remember feeling actually happy since before mom was killed and that was…twenty-two _long _years ago…Contentment and peace of mind were two exotic creatures that as far as Dean knew had never been anywhere near _his_ brain and which he wasn't entirely convinced weren't as semi-mythical as unicorns anyway…Although considering what he did for a living, he couldn't state that there were no such things as unicorns either…The closest he got to positive emotion was the few hours of unconsciousness when he was sleep...

So I'm _high_…practically in orbit with Mir from the way he felt…_but since I don't do rec…rec…reational stigmas…stim…that drug crap…I'm in hospital_...he was aware the realisation should at the very least alarm him in some way…_they must be pumping distilled happy juice into my veins_…Oh well; at least he wasn't dead – yet – so he'd deal in the morning – maybe some dude would take the anvils off his eyelids then…

Although…if that much narcotic numbness was being pumped into him by whatever IV, Dean thought, he shouldn't have woken up. The docs around here were probably thinking he was dead to the world – okay, bad phraseology – deeply unconscious. But something had woken him up…he thought about it…it wasn't himself, he was feeling _no _pain. So…?

Anger...that was it, he could almost feel it in the room. But he wasn't angry…it wasn't bio-chemically _possible_ to be this stoned and feel the slightest inclination to ire. Concentrating, Dean tried his eyelids again – but all he could see was a vague sliver of light…oh yeah, that was because he only had his eyes open a crack…_if I open my eyes…I can see more_…pleased with this deduction, he tried again but only managed a slightly increased view of a largely hazy and foggily indistinct world.

Still it was enough to see…Sam…at the end of his bed…_Sammy_…Uh-oh…Sammy with a face like thunder as he stood in profile at the end of Dean's – presumably – hospital bed angrily facing someone else. There was only one person in the world who could get Sammy that mad, that fast...Yep, if he tried to move his eyes to the right, there was Dad out of the corner of his eye, facing off against Sam.

Mentally Dean tried to clear away the fog; this was his job. Sam and Dad collided like tectonic plates – immovable object and irresistible force…but Dean was the fault line between the two, the safety valve by which those tremendous opposing forces were…well, not stopped but at least dissipated somewhat. He wasn't always as successful as he'd like, sometimes he could only reduce a 9.2 to an 8.8, but hey, every little helped, surely?

Somehow though, his thoughts wouldn't come together, although, while he couldn't hear dad, he got Sam's side of the fight.

"Do you have any comprehension of how close he came to dying? Dy-_ing_. Gone, finished, _dead!_ You will _not_ come in here bullying him with that stupid Marine crap – 'repress your feelings and get out that bed, boy, you can overcome 99 blood loss and all four limbs being ripped off, you're just not trying hard enough!'"

Dean wanted to laugh – that was actually a pretty good imitation of the way Dad used to hector him if he'd ever wanted to give up at something when he was kid…he saw Dad's mouth move but couldn't hear the words.

"…you're _not_ his father here! Next-of-kin, dad, next-of-kin, _I'm _the techno-wizard of the family Dad, remember, the cyber-surfer extraordinaire? You appreciated that back in the days when you could barely work a toaster. As far as the medical system of the US of A knows, I am Dean's only living relative. I alone have full power of attorney and as of now, you are barred from this hospital room…"

Dad's mouth moved again but he looked upset instead of angry.

"Save it for someone who cares…and is too gullible to see through you. Set one toe over that threshold and I will have you arrested on any charge I can dream up!"

Dad reached out a hand that Sammy batted away, sharply.

"Okay, that's enough." Dean told them. "Come on, Sammy, it's probably not as bad as it looks...Dad, just let me have until tomorrow morning, then we'll all blow this burg…Okay?"

_Okay…?_ Dean's leaden eyes blurred despite his attempts to focus as neither man showed any sign they had heard a single word…_I only said it inside my head_?

"Do you know how many times you've endangered Dean's health because you're an emotionally crippled bully who demands feats of endurance and stamina that would drive Superman into therapy? How many times I've stood there terrified that _this _time you will go too far in your pushing and your hectoring and your harassing - and Dean will drop dead because of trying to please you above all sanity and the agony of his own body? No more! _Get out!_"

_No, Sammy…don't…Dad, he doesn't mean it, he's just upset. Sammy, please don't be mad with Dad about me…I'm not worth it…I never was, you know he loves you so much, man, and it hurts him so much when you two fight, even though he hides it with anger himself. Come on Sammy?_

But the words remained in Dean's head and his eyelids just would _not_ stay open and it was so hard to stay awaaaaa…

_Continued in Chapter 3…_

© 2006, Catherine D Stewart


	2. Chapters 3 & 4

_**Disclaimer, Summary & Rating:** _Please see Chapter 1.

**MILES TO GO BEFORE I SLEEP**

**Chapter 3**

"…don't…fight…"

"Dean?" it was a soft, low voice, and something wonderfully cold brushed his lips, coating them in a sweet chill liquid that his tongue gratefully accepted as a small help to washing away the dead skunk…_ice chips_…

His eyelids co-operated with all the smoothness of a rusted gate but he managed; his eyes felt gummy and dry and Dean realised that he _still_ felt toasty and cosy and not that bothered about anything…_must still have got me on a full dosage of the good stuff…_But first -

"With dad…"

"Dean?"

"I dreamed…" Dean thought about it…what had he dreamed…something to do with trains…? "You had a fight with dad…"

"Wow, you dreamed I had a fight with dad…how weird is that? Let me call Ripley's _Believe It Or Not_…" the voice was amused, but then gentled. "Dad's not here, Dean. It's just me."

He'd dreamed it...oh well, hardly a surprise given the wealth of those kinds of memories his subconscious had had to draw upon. "I remember…you got the Chomp Thing…w'hap'n'd?"

Sam suddenly hove into view over him and for a moment didn't respond while he carefully fed Dean more refreshing ice chips. "I got you in the Impala and just drove off – somehow I got lucky with the direction and got you here."

"Where?"

"_Winchester_, New Hampshire…" Sam smirked at him, "I dragged you in and did the whole 'unprepared college kids hiking in the boondocks bad bear encounter' deal."

"They bought it?"

"Swallowed it whole…luckily these are thoroughly urbanised examples of the species _homo sapiens_; they wouldn't recognise a genuine bear attack from a hole in the ground."

Might as well find out while he was chemically cushioned from the shock, Dean supposed. "How bad is it?"

Sam lost his smile but didn't look away or down or refuse to meet Dean's admittedly glassy gaze. "Man, the Lord looks after innocents and fools…"

"So my clean living's saved me?" Dean managed to dredge up the quip.

Sammy snorted derisorily, "You were never innocent…but going by this, you're the dumbest guy alive."

"Ha-ha."

"Chomp Thing sliced you from shoulder to sole down your left side," Sam told him, "to the bone in some places…but by some miracle it didn't hit any major arterial vein in the process." Sam shook his head slightly as he gave Dean more ice chips, "Somehow it completely missed your femoral artery…"

Dean sucked the ice chips, well aware that if the Chomp Thing had got him there he would have been dead in the seconds it took Sam to decapitate the thing, turn to him and attempt to clamp the blood flow – especially with the blood loss from the rest of his injured body.

"…although if it had got you an inch more to the right, you'd have been eligible to join a male voice choir for the first time since you were thirteen."

"Twelve," Dean corrected automatically…It was Sam who hadn't started puberty until he was thirteen. "My nerves…?"

"I thought you didn't have any?" Sam taunted, but smiled reassuringly. "Again your ship of dumb luck came in. No nerve damage – not even a broken bone – just muscle and blood loss. The thing's claws were like razors, they just sliced sharp and clean through your muscles, which even with so many deep wounds is far easier and faster to treat that jagged tears. They've got you on some fully-loaded antibiotics against infection and I've been adding Holy Water to your saline just to take care of any paranormal pathogens."

Dean smiled slightly; other kids' dads took them to Little League games when they were kindergarteners…John Winchester had them in the middle of the woods making improvised IVs out of inner tubes, funnels and duct tape. "What do you think?"

"Well I doubt the Chomp Thing was into personal hygiene…it never scrubbed under those nails, but I think the Holy Water's taken care of any problems," Sam said confidently.

"Okay…" suddenly Dean found himself giving a massive yawn and someone promptly plonked those anvils back onto his eyelids again.

There was something he needed to ask…something important about Winchester, New Hampshire, but he was tired…

**Chapter 4**

If you squinted slightly, the cracks on that ceiling tile looked just like _Yogi Bear's _sidekick…whatshisname…Boo-Boo. Idly Dean wondered if he would get away with calling Sammy _that_ nickname and realised probably not. Bears were relevant though – oh yeah, bear attack was their cover story.

Dean idled away a few minutes watching Boo-Boo but soon got bored. He was _still _feeling _veeery_ happy with everything, and he couldn't feel any of his appendages apart from a sensation of dragging heaviness…which was probably a good thing. Dean was all too familiar with the 'wearing off of pain meds' experience. He considered trying to see but decided against it; moving around too much might bust some stitches or mess up something that was healing fine until Dean got St. Vitus' Dance…and Sammy would eat him raw and whole for a stunt that dumb. _Not_ irritating the telekinetic bro' who could take a belt to your ass from across the room where you couldn't reach him was a sensible move at this point.

Although he should have asked Sammy about how hard the Chomp Thing had cracked his skull considering how dark his vision still was, though he could see those annoying lights that were shining in his eyes from over there –

Oh…ah, stars. The annoying lights were stars he could see through the window. It was dark because it was _dark_. Not a problem then.

Again, he realised that something had awakened him specifically, but he felt fine…he wasn't too hot, he wasn't too cold…hang on, most of him wasn't too hot. But his left hand felt as if it were resting on a hot water bottle?

Dean couldn't turn his head, nothing so heavy, but his eyes were a bit more enthusiastic about the whole opening thing and so he looked at his hand. It was a _very_ peculiar shape and for a long moment he stared at it until the blob resolved itself. His hand was hot because it was being held – what was that sissy word they used in chick-lit novels? – _clasped_, yeah, clasped between two other hands, like ham in a sandwich.

They were not feminine hands, all soft and elegant and smooth, but were thick-fingered and tanned and callused. Dean's eyes followed the hands up the arms to a head…a man with greying dark hair, kicked-puppy brown eyes and a greying beard. John Winchester stared at his hands holding Dean's in his own as if they held the secret of life, the universe and everything…knowing John Winchester, they very well could.

_Daddy?_

This time he must have spoken aloud for his father looked up at him, and smiled. "Dean? Hey…"

"Dad…"

His dad smiled at him, "Don't call me on the stupid question, but how do you feel?"

"No pain…" Dean assured him, "…but then I am drugged to the eyeballs."

"You don't say?" Dad's tone was amused.

Dean smiled at him, his inner warmth increasing. How had dad found where he was? More, _why_ had he come? After Chicago, and Meg Masters…_I should've realised sooner that Meg was using Sam to attack you, dad…I dropped the ball and both you and Sammy were in danger…_Dean was surprised that their dad wasn't still too angry to come considering how he'd messed up.

In fact, where was Sam? Dean realised he couldn't see his brother the room…it was just him and dad. "Sam?"

"He's asleep in a side-room down the hall," Dad supplied. "He was persuaded to take a quick break in the hospital cafeteria and he fell asleep practically in his food."

Dean got that – his own eyes were getting heavy again. However…was Dad really dad? Assuming that this _wasn't_ some drug-induced hallucination flirted up by Dean's brain, considering what had gone down in Chicago, could that really be John Winchester looking at him so gently and fondly – so un-dad-like – from that chair and holding his hand for the first time in…twenty years?...like it was a Ming vase to boot?

Or was it something else? A skinwalker, a shapeshifter, a non-corporeal entity or just a plain old glamour-wearing demon who would gut him like a mackerel as soon as he fell to sleep; already he could feel the insistent whispering of Morpheus to close his eyes…? It was immaterial – in his current state he was helpless to defend himself.

"You were here…before," Dean said, struggling to stay awake and focus…it was highly unlikely that Sam would sleep the night through, exhausted as he was. The two brothers had spent the vast majority of their lives – at least up until Sam took off to college – sleeping about a foot-and-a-half apart from each other, even if dad hadn't always been similarly sleeping within about four feet of them. Such ingrained habits were deeply difficult to negate…

Uncharitably Dean had the thought that maybe Sam had been so quick to 'find' Jessica as a Stanford Freshman more because he simply couldn't adjust to sleeping without another human being in close proximity than any instant and overwhelming attraction. Nevertheless, the fact remained that sleeping alone was something neither Dean nor his brother did well; for himself Dean knew he didn't settle, fidgeting and tossing, unconsciously listening for the breathing, even sometimes the _scent_ of a person that should be there, but wasn't.

"Yes…but I can't stay for much longer…" Dad said.

"Why…?"

Dad looked incredibly sad. "Sam…Sam doesn't know I'm here, Dean."

"Why?"

"Sam...Sam's banned me from seeing you, Dean…I'm not allowed to come into the room…"

_Because he's furious with you for bullying me back to my feet before I'm well again like you used to do, or because he knows you're really some fugly monster that's gonna kill me if you can?_

It was question Dean hadn't the cognisance to ask in his current state - or the ability to do anything about if he had and the answer was (b).

"…so I'll just come in and see you when I can…"

"Okay…" Dean agreed simply because he was unable to do anything else…he was just too tired to stay awake…_I'm sorry Sammy, I can't keep my eyes open. I love you Dad, if it's really you…if not…I'm sorry Sammy, I tried, but I couldn't stay awake and it killed me…See you in the morning bro'…I hope..._

_Continued in Chapter 5…_

© 2006, Catherine D Stewart


	3. Chapters 5 & 6

_**Disclaimer, Summary & Rating:** _Please see Chapter 1.

**MILES TO GO BEFORE I SLEEP**

**Chapter 5**

Either hell was like his hospital room, or Dean wasn't dead. After a moment, he plumped for Door No.2. Opening his eyes, Dean blinked a couple of times and noted that he had no blurry or foggy vision to contend with. Well, that was something. Other than that, he wasn't still warm and snugly, but he was still drifting in a cocoon of contented indifference that suggested they had only decreased the dosage of whatever slightly. Nevertheless, his body felt stiff in all the wrong places and he could feel a peripheral heaviness to his limbs that warned he should be very grateful he _was_ highballed to the gills on painkillers. _I wonder if I've still got all my limbs…_

There was clear blue sky through the window and the room was light; in a chair in front of that window sat a large shape with floppy hair reading a newspaper…Sam. Dean moved his eyes around, but the hospital room was otherwise empty. Dean looked at his brother's bent head as Sam read the paper, considering what to do. If dad had been a drug-induced hallucination, mentioning it would only a) upset Sam and b) cause a reduction in his pain meds he wasn't quite ready for. If 'dad' had been a demon who was toying with Dean by letting him live so long for its own twisted reason, telling Sam would endanger his brother's safety…and if dad had been here and really been dad, 'fessing up to Sam would make him angry and he would take steps to stop Dad coming again. _So keep your cakehole shut, Dean_, he admonished himself.

Dean was content to just look at his brother and doze slightly until he began to itch slightly. He flexed muscles and tried to rub against the hospital sheets (hardly the softest thing he'd ever had against his skin) but no luck. He must have twitched again, noticeably.

"Dean?" Sam was standing beside the bed. "More ice chips?"

"Yeah…" Dean accepted the tiny slivers gratefully, sucking them to refresh his mouth and work on the lingering remains of the late Mr Skunk.

"You got an itch? I could scratch…" Sam saw him surreptitiously fidget.

"Not there you won't," Dean vetoed firmly.

Before Sam could respond, the door opened; a young and totally _hot_ African-American nurse came in. She was Dean's every _Halle Berry in a nurse's uniform_ wet dream come true.

She beamed at Dean as if he'd just discovered the cure for cancer. "You're awake, Mr Barnes, that's excellent."

Barnes… that had been what he'd needed to ask about the serendipity of them ending up in _Winchester, _New Hampshire – what alias were they using? He had a vague memory that the credit cards they'd been using this trip had been for Reece and Ryan Finchley, but he couldn't really remember, and those credit cards would only have paid for the ER treatment, not this hospital room…which was rather nice as well. Dean flicked a glance to Sam, but he looked blandly unconcerned, so Dean decided to worry about such things only if he had to.

"You can call me Dean," he dropped his voice half an octave and almost purred, ignoring the way Sam raised his eyes to the ceiling as if asking some higher being, _Can you believe him? _"and you are…?"

"You can call me 'Nurse'," she said firmly but with a twinkle in her delectable melted-chocolate eyes.

Sam gave a loud snort and glared at Dean with a clear 'behave' order in his eyes. "Can the doctor see Dean this morning?"

"He certainly will now you're awake and…reasonably…alert," she smiled at him, reducing Dean to a melted puddle of adoring goo, before giving Sam a significant glower as she added tartly, "but that won't be for a good hour, so _plenty_ of time for _you_ to take yourself off and at least get some food in your stomach."

Sam glared back at her, but Dean focussed on not just looking at his brother but actually _seeing_ him…Yikes. Grey face, lank hair and red, dull eyes - with the entire Louis Vuitton luggage collection underneath them. "Take a break, Sammy."

"It's Sam," came the automatically reply, "and I'll be okay until the doctor's seen you."

"_Sah-mee_," Dean enunciated the word with as much pep as he could put into it. "Dude, you're not hearing the subtext."

"This from the guy whose eyeballs are pinwheeling in their sockets?"

Dean turned his head to the right, sniffing deeply and ostentatiously, "Bro', on my right, I have _Coco Chanel_, admittedly with unfortunate hints of carbolic…" turning his head to where Sam had stood up from his chair by the window, he sniffed again, "Over here I have the reek of old sweat and the pong of someone who's slept in the same pants for a week."

"Are you saying I smell?" Sam sputtered.

"I'm saying you're getting perilously close to _stench_. What nice Nurse 'Nurse' is too polite to say is that if you _won't_ do us all a favour and go take a _loooong_ shower, at least try and stick downwind."

"Really?" Sam looked at the nurse.

She gave him an apologetic smile, "Dr Field will be around in about an hour-and-a-half. That's more than enough time for you to get some breakfast and freshen up and be back. Don't worry, I'll make sure Dean is fine."

"Oh yeah…bye Sammy," Dean smirked at the nurse, who rolled her eyes.

"_You_ offered," Sam also smirked at her before picking up his jacket and turning back to Dean. "I'll be back."

"_Dude, _where's your pride?"

Sam grinned, "Man, I've been waiting _years_ to use that line."

**Chapter 6**

Sam's nose wrinkled as he slid into the driver's seat of the Impala. After he'd provided the hospital personnel with some startling excitement, he'd only left the hospital main building once since he'd burst into the ER half-carrying/half-supporting his precious burden. While Dean was in emergency surgery Sam had had to head off the sheriff, playing the preppy college boy for all he was worth; fortunately the man had bought it and Sam had chosen the 'Barnes' identities for this very reason, though eventually he would have to let Dean in on the story behind it. The background check the sheriff had undoubtedly done would corroborate his portrayal of Samuel Barnes and the Barnes' IDs were watertight – he had certainly paid enough for them to be so.

After dealing with the local law, Sam had washed himself up as best he could in a restroom and then moved the Impala to the darkest corner of the hospital's underground parking garage. He'd exchanged his bloodied T-shirt for one of Dean's, but the faint scent of his brother on the garment as he pulled it over his head had almost caused him to collapse in a blubbering heap of shock and fear for Dean's life. As he'd breathed in it had triggered a ghastly Technicolor replay of Dean grey and haggard in another hospital bed with some doctor telling him his _twenty-six-year-old _brother had had a massive heart-attack and was going to be dead inside six months…which had segued smoothly into another crystalline clear replay of his precognitive vision in Max Miller's closet…when Max had pulled the trigger and Dean's head had disappeared in a mess of blood and brains spattered on the bedroom wall...

So he'd left it at the T-shirt for his sanity's sake, just locking the car and returning the hospital. He'd eaten a couple of candy bars and caught a cat-nap in a side room but that was it. Considering the definite aroma permeating the Impala, Sam had to admit that Dean and Nurse…Castle, that was it…had probably had a point.

Driving away from the hospital, he pulled in at the first motel he reached. It was a level above the usual Winchester hotel accommodation, but you still had to pay extra for room cleaning, which Sam specifically didn't want, and they were still the sort of proprietors who preferred cash over cards and didn't bat an eyelid when everyone who signed the register seemed to be surnamed Smith. Sam paid for a ground-floor twin-bedded room in cash and stated that he wanted neither cleaning service nor disturbing for anything less than Armageddon itself.

Taking the Impala round the back of the motel, he parked it in the most sheltered corner of the parking lot, near his room. It was quick work to remove the false floor of the trunk and dump all his and Dean's 'tools of the trade' onto the currently unused bed; he had also removed their eclectic collection of IDs, Dean's Glock-17 and his own 9mm Beretta from the glove box back to the room. With the Impala restored to a superficially normal car once more, Sam locked his motel room and drove off again, finding what he was looking for in a local garage.

Though casually cordial, he saw the way their eyes gleamed at the sight of the 'classic' Impala, and Sam's sweet charm soon had them putty in his hands as he admitted to being one of the 'bear attack' brothers and regaled them with the terrifying tale. When he stated that the Impala had been a graduation present to Dean from 'our late mother,' they had been only too happy to help and he had used the Barnes' identity to pay up front. The garage assured him that they would give the Impala a complete overhaul and valet the inside to the point of sterilisation.

Grabbing a taxi back to the motel, Sam let himself into the room and locked it behind him, leaning wearily against it for a moment. There wasn't a millimetre of him that didn't hurt…a lot. Even his hair throbbed. He shrugged off his jacket, noting the faint dark spatters that the unobservant would take for coffee stains. The jacket was too expensive to discard, but there was a dry-cleaning service right next door to the hospital main entrance. As for his jeans, his original T-shirt and the one he was wearing of Dean's, they could all go in the trash, they were too ingrained with mud, forest grime…and his brother's blood.

Going into the bathroom, Sam found it a pleasant improvement on most for that price range. Apparently what the motel skimped in dusting the actual room they'd decided to lavish on providing a bathroom that _wasn't_ a utopia for everything from Legionnaire's Disease through Ebola to the Black Death. The taps didn't exactly sparkle but all the fittings including the plugholes and the shower head were free from lime scale and there was no ubiquitous black mould in the tiling grout. Even better, instead of one of those skanky useless curtains that also safely harboured all known germs, the shower had actual frosted glass sides.

Looking at himself in the mirror, Sam admitted that he looked well…like how he usually felt – bone-weary. His hair was so greasy it shone as if someone had melted a tub of lard over his head. Sam lathered his hair vigorously twice and then allowed the hot spray to pound him back to wakefulness as he generously applied the cake of soap with equal enthusiasm. When he finally turned the shower off he felt exhausted but infinitely more human.

Drying himself off, he didn't get dressed straight away but treated himself to a wet shave instead of his usual rapid buzz with an electric razor. He didn't have the heavy whiskers of dad or Dean – _note to self, don't let Dean look into a mirror without giving him a head's up_ – but he looked a lot less 'serial killer _chic_' once he'd shaved.

Grabbing Dean's holdall, he put in toiletries, clothing, plus shorts and a vest for Dean to sleep in, since keeping Dean Winchester willingly in that hospital gown was a non-starter. Checking their belongings were safely zipped up and showing nothing of interest just in case, he called another cab and went back to the hospital, alighting just outside the dry-cleaners, where Samuel Barnes paid for the jacket to be cleaned. Going into the hospital, Sam wasn't the slightest bit hungry but forced himself to eat a sandwich and drink a bottle of water from the café. Feeling infinitely more alert, he went back upstairs to where Dean and hopefully the doctor awaited.

_Continued in Chapter 7…_

© 2006, Catherine D Stewart


	4. Chapters 7 & 8

_**Disclaimer, Summary & Rating:** _Please see Chapter 1.

**MILES TO GO BEFORE I SLEEP**

**Chapter 7**

Sam entered his hospital room where Dean reclined in state; immobile and drugged he still flirted outrageously with Nurse Castle – Ruth - who responded with the benevolent amusement of someone who isn't buying it for a second…_this girl's got brothers, _Sam suddenly knew.

Sam was aware of the way Dean relaxed somehow when he came back into the room; the gashes had gone but the psychological scars of Chicago would take a long time to fade. Not that Sam had any concerns about Ruth Castle as she was clearly an intelligent and dedicated nurse; besides which he had checked her out.

After Meg Masters, no matter how beautiful the babe, Sam wasn't going to let her anywhere near his brother until he checked her out to the molecular level. He'd managed to brush Ruth's hand with fingers still damp from Holy Water, muttered 'Christo' twice to make sure, and had managed to delicately filch an ebony strand of hair from her uniform that he had tested to destruction. Ruth Castle was 100 human. Okay, after the Bender family, that wasn't necessarily all you could go on, but Sam was satisfied she was no danger to Dean, and that was all that mattered.

Dean sniffed the air exaggeratedly, "Mmm, minty fresh. Good on yah, bro'. Now, I need coffee –"

Ruth Castle clucked her tongue at him, "I don't think so. Dr Field will be here any minute."

Dean sighed heavily despite the nasal canula, "Okay…then I can see a menu? How do you expect me to recuperate with malnutrition?"

Ruth shot Sam a '_Is he always like this?'_ look for Dean to see as she made sure that the IV drip into Dean's hand was secure. "If Dr Field is happy with your progress, you can start having soup and Jello."

"_Jello?_ Dean W- Barnes does not do _Jello_." He vetoed firmly, shooting Sam a silent command with his eyes.

Abruptly Ruth Castle straightened up and put her hands on her hips, glaring fiercely at Sam in a manner that was strongly reminiscent of Missouri Moseley, "And don't you even think about it, boy, or I'll take a birch switch to your butt."

"What?" Sam demanded startled.

She snorted, "Boys, I've got _four_ brothers; I know that look, Dean Thomas Barnes, that 'sneak me a burger and fries into the hospital' look." She pointed a finger at Sam, "If you dare…"

"Are you kidding?" Sam grinned. "No way am I going to be your enabler, Dean. It'll do you good to eat nutritiously for once."

"Jello and nutrition is a contradiction in terms," Dean shot back, "and my diet is fine, Sammy."

"Yeah right, this from the guy who thinks the four food groups are fat, sugar, grease and caffeine."

Whatever retort Dean would have made was lost as Dr Field arrived. He was a cheerful, ruddy-faced blond with an efficient but kindly manner, though he looked to be only a few years older than Dean. He probably was, Sam acknowledged; like Indiana Jones had said, 'It's not the years – it's the mileage.' When he'd started Stanford he'd been eighteen years old but in every way bar linear biology Sam had been decades older than his fellow Freshmen, and even most of the professors. There had been only a very few who had looked back at him with that ancient wisdom in their eyes and who had possessed the invisible but instantly identifiable aura of those with heartbroken souls. In any way that really mattered, Dean was the oldest patient in this hospital.

Sam tuned back in as Dr Field examined Dean's injuries thoroughly but without jarring him in any way. Dean looked down at himself with drugged incuriosity. He had half-expected the left side of his body to be bandaged up like that Imhotep dude in that flick, **_The Mummy_, **which he had watched 'cause Rachael Weisz was totally _hot._ While certain areas were bandaged, the majority of his left arm, left side of his torso and left leg were exposed.

Dean had braced himself for gore but instead the slices were mostly bright pink or vibrant purple streaks down his body. Most of the cuts were healing white lines on his flesh, though the worst were held together not with traditional silk sutures but those fancy silver 'staples' that gradually dissolved. Dean examined them with interest; he'd caught a documentary in the small hours recently about how scientists had only just rediscovered why the Romans – surgeons without peer – refused to use anything other than silver instruments and 'staple' stitches.

Apparently the stainless steel used since the 19th Century by Western physicians hindered the body's healing processes and reduced blood clotting abilities, whereas silver actively boosted these. A lot of medical facilities were making the changeover, but while silver staples were by far more medically beneficial and less likely to produce infection, they were proportionally more expensive. Yet again though, Sammy was watching Dr Field's examination with no apparent concern over the finances of paying for this, so for now, Dean would let it go.

The skin around the cuts was understandably swollen but it was the bright red of healthy, blood nourished skin, not the dull burgundy-black of inflammation and infection. The left side of his body was also spectacularly battered and scraped and in fact looked a great deal worse that the cuts. For a moment Dean thought that the Chomp Thing had sliced off his left nipple but the dark aureole was merely invisible against the purple-black bruising. From his ankle to his shoulder, his flesh was a mottled kaleidoscope of black, blue, purple, orange, yellow and green bruises that made him look as if he had been at ground zero of an explosion in a paint factory.

Dean tuned back in as Dr Field gave a pleased verdict.

"…excellent progress, healing really nicely. Our main concern was infection from the bear's claws, but the antibiotics seem to have taken care of that superbly."

_Yeah, with a little Holy Water help_, Dean added mentally.

Dr Field assured him, "but you're doing really well. You're young and in tip-top physical shape…that packet of cigarettes notwithstanding," he gave Dean a stern look, "which unfortunately were so ruined we had to dump them in the trash…"

Dean glowered at Sam who merely grinned at him from where he was quietly monitoring the situation, leaning against the wall. Sam knew that cigarettes weren't really a problem. Dean carried cigarette lighters because they were useful back-ups when your torch batteries ran down – or inexplicably failed – or when creating naked flame would be a real advantage, like with the bug spray at Larry Pike's house back in Oasis Plains. However, when really stressed to the max, Dean would occasionally go somewhere quiet and have a furtive smoke. Considering Dean drank strictly in moderation, did _not_ voluntarily touch illegal narcotics of any type including 'just' weed spliffs, and was the poster-boy for safe sex, that occasional vice was something Sam had chosen to ignore, especially as it only happened after some stress-fest situation along the lines of _Really, really, really the End of the World as We Know It._

"…see you tomorrow morning," Dr Field was saying, "until then I'll leave you to your bed-bath."

"Thanks, Doctor," Dean responded automatically before his brain caught up…_bed-bath?_ He looked at luscious Ruthie…_Okay, this is definitely doable…_

Looking as if she were trying to hold back a laugh, Ruth Castle smiled sweetly and said, "I'll leave you to it, Sam…if you're sure you don't mind?"

Dean looked at the paraphernalia that had somehow appeared in the room on a cart and with which his brother was messing with a worrying familiarity…

"No way!" he warned.

Sam, the scumbag, had a huge grin on his face, "Come on Dean, you wouldn't want people to know the _other _reason you're my _little_ brother, would you?"

Castle made an odd gargling noise in the back of her throat that sounded like someone desperately stifling guffaws of laughter as Dean fumed at the sly double-entendre. "Payback's a bitch, Sammy," he growled.

"Yeah, and you're it, now shut up." Still grinning, Sam reached for the cloth, as Dean furiously turned to glare at Nurse Traitor only to catch the door clicking shut on the view of her back as she walked away – her body shaking with what sounded like giggles.

**Chapter 8**

Dean pressed back into his pillows as it dawned that this was not some in-joke between Sam and Castle to wind him up. Sam was really intending to…

"_Do. Not. Even. Think. About. It._" He warned in his most authoritative tone.

Sammy appeared unaffected by a tone that should have had him backing across the room with his hands in the air. "Relax, Dean."

"_Re-?_ You are _not_ going to bathe me!" hissed Dean irately.

"Yes I am," shot back Sam, his expression becoming irritated. "Who do you think has been keeping _you_ 'minty fresh' while you were unconscious? And do you seriously think Castle would have stood there and watched me add Holy Water and medicinal herbs to her wash water without asking me the odd curious question? Or that she wouldn't have grilled me about your interesting collection of bodily scars?"

"Sam…" Dean refused to contemplate who had been wiping his ass while he had been out for the count, it was just too gross, but he was unable to refute his brother's other points.

"Dean…" Sam mimicked his tone. "When we first got here, the sheriff was within a whisker of arresting me for attempted murder until I got him to buy that bear story. Right now nobody's paying attention but if Castle had started asking me pointed questions about how you got those scars, the sheriff might have decided to do a more in-depth investigation into that bear."

"That would never have happened," Dean protested, "besides, I'm stronger than you, Samm-o, I can kick your ass into next week and I swear I will if you come near me with that cloth."

"It still might happen," Sam contradicted him, "yeah, I know you're stronger than me, but they don't. Height is power, bro' and all they can see is that I'm taller than you – and spiffily healthy in contrast to my train wreck brother – and the last thing we need is someone realising that there is only _my_ word that there ever _was_ any 'bear'."

Dean momentarily had no riposte for that, and Sam took advantage to flirt back the bedcovers; he did so expertly so that Dean remained covered from the waist down – he'd deal with that when he came to it. "Now lean forward."

With gritted teeth, Dean complied, glaring down at the bedclothes with mortification. He didn't know what outraged him more – that anyone thought Sam _could_ do something like this to him, or that he _would_. Telekinetic or not he could still take Sam-u-el in a fight and he always would…as for anything deliberate…

Sure, they had flashpoints, but what family didn't? Even back in crazy Ellicott's asylum, Dean had known it wasn't _Sam_. Dean had absolute faith that Sam would never have pulled the trigger on that shotgun had it contained anything more than rock salt, and that when Sam had pulled the trigger of that pistol, the part of Sam that was still Sam had trusted in Dean _not_ just giving him a loaded gun to meekly help Ellicott's attempt at coerced fratricide. Deep inside, where Ellicott couldn't go, Sam had known that gun wasn't loaded.

However, Sam washed Dean's back and neck with speed but deft care, before washing Dean's torso and even giving Dean's necklace charm a quick wipe. Despite the water being only lukewarm, it tingled against Dean's injuries, reinforcing to him the debt he owed to Sam for thinking of the Holy Water; it was clearly still working against mystical nastiness.

"Can you raise your right arm?"

Dean promptly did so, but sweat immediately broke out on his brow, and it felt as if an elephant were pushing back against the limb. Quickly Sam washed the underside of his arm and his pit and then moved back to his left arm. He picked up Dean's left wrist as if it were bone china, careful of the bandages and IV tube.

"Sure there was no nerve damage?" the words slipped out before Dean could censor them; the limb fell weighted and somehow not his own. The commands he was sending to his fingers to flex were ignored and he could only faintly feel the pressure of Sam's fingers around his wrist.

"Positive. Most of the numbness is the drugs," Sam assured him. Impersonally Sam pushed back the covers and washed the outside of Dean's legs and feet. Casually he asked, "Can you manage for a minute?"

Dean took the washcloth from him in his right hand in a virtual death-grip of determination as Sam went into the bathroom. Bending every iota of his will to the task, Dean carefully washed himself as quickly as possible whilst ensuring that he did not knock his convene, before tossing the washcloth back on the tray and tugging the bedclothes back to his waist. Sam came out of the bathroom with another tray of shaving accoutrements.

Dean hadn't thought about shaving – his head didn't have that dry, itchy feeling that he got when his hair was in need of washing, so presumably Sam the Stylist had given him a shampoo and set the last time he'd…_okay, not thinking about that_…"Don't bother with that," he tried to discourage.

Sam looked at him. "Do you remember when we were kids and sometimes we'd catch a rerun of that old show, _Grizzly Adams?_"

"Um…yeah?"

"Brace yourself." Sam advised, picking up the handheld face mirror from the cart and holding it up so Dean could see.

"_Whoa_…" Dean's eyes widened; since the time he'd started puberty he had always been relatively clean-shaven, apart from maybe four or five days growth on a hunt in the middle of nowhere where mirrors weren't an issue.

Sam sat back down on the bed, lathering the shaving brush. "Make sure you keep still," he admonished.

"Still? Dude, with _you_ waving a razor around my favourite jugular, I'm officially deep frozen as of now." Dean assured him nervously.

Shaving was easy. Shaving another man was not and it was a skill Sam had never felt the need to acquire because, due respect, that was not his bag. He started at the sideburns of Dean's right ear; if he didn't use the razor firmly enough, all he'd do was massage Dean's whiskers, but if he pressed too hard, he could cut his brother's face and Dean really didn't need to lose any more haemoglobin than he already had. Fortunately Dean was true to his word and remained still as Sam _very carefully_ gave him a shave.

It was a weird feeling, Dean had to admit, but not entirely uncomfortable. It was kind of like those ancient Pharaohs and stuff used to be…what did they call them?…Po-something…Potentates. Yeah, like one of those ancient Emperors of the world who had hordes of slaves to bathe and shave and dress them and hell, probably even turn them over in bed when they felt like changing position. Once you got past the embarrassment of it, there was kind of a sneaky luxurious indulgence to it.

Dean came back as something cool touched his left foot. Sam had finished with the razor and had moved to the bottom of the bed again, turning back the bedclothes to expose Dean's left leg and squeezing something from a bottle onto the top of Dean's foot. It was a thick white cream substance from a bottle marked _Palmer's Cocoa Butter with Vitamin E and Silk_.

Sam raised both eyebrows as Dean opened his mouth and so he subsided as Sam gently started massaging the lotion into Dean's foot. It wasn't macho but truth to tell, Dean went through the USA's entire stock of moisturisers on average every six weeks. It was necessary for any lifestyle that had a high risk of scarring injuries…_and hunting things with fangs and claws and the occasional overcompensation of tentacles doesn't come much higher risk_…it was essential to keep skin healthy and supple, otherwise the scar tissue would heal 'tight', rigid and thick, losing flexibility. Considering how well his scars were healing despite the short time span – and Holy Water and healing herbs could only do so much - Dean somehow suspected that the reason Sam had looked like hell was because he'd spent most of the past few days almost continuously massaging and moisturising Dean's injuries to promote blood flow and toxin breakdown in the muscle tissues instead of getting any rest.

Besides, it felt _sooooo_ good, "I didn't know you knew how to do massage…"

"They did run of classes at Stanford during the summer last year," Sam said, "so I took them – Indian Head Massage, Swedish Massage, Reflexology, Aromatherapy, all that kind of thing."

"Good boy…"

A shadow passed over Sam's face, even though he smiled at the way Dean was practically purring like a big ole' tiger sunning itself, "Yeah…though I gotta admit the appeal was being able to practice on _Jess_…"

Having seen up close the gorgeousness of the tragically murdered girl, Dean could well imagine how those 'practice' sessions had ended. If Sam had been half as good at massaging Jessica as he was at creating that zone of absolute bliss around Dean's left foot, it was no wonder he'd had no trouble keeping hold of a girl as hot as Jessica had been.

"Well practice makes perfect, Sammy, so keep going…" Settling himself back in the pillows, Dean sighed and wiggled his toes to make the sad moment pass, pleased when the ghost of his murdered lover finally faded from Sam's eyes.

Not entirely…never entirely, just as Dean knew that Mary Winchester looked out from his own gaze, and that of his father, often. But enough…

_Continued in Chapter 9…_

© 2006, Catherine D Stewart


	5. Chapters 9 & 10

_**Disclaimer, Summary & Rating:** _Please see Chapter 1.

**MILES TO GO BEFORE I SLEEP**

**Chapter 9**

Dean blinked slowly, for a moment disoriented at the darkness. He focussed on the clock on the wall, which told him it was just gone two-thirty in the morning.

He felt a lot more clear-headed than on previous occasions, though still with that feeling of slightly-detached 'mellow' that indicated some narcotic intake. He could also feel increased stiffness in his body and definite – albeit faint – itching/throbbing from his wounds that would doubtless be a lot more assertive when they took him off the pain medication altogether. Oh what anticipatory joy.

Once again his hand felt like it was resting on a hot water bottle so…

"Dad?"

"Hey," John Winchester, sat in the chair in front of the window, leaned forward, his perpetually sad brown eyes unfathomable in the gloom. He nodded at Dean's clean lower face, "Something for the weekend, huh?"

"Maybe _next _weekend," Dean smiled back.

He wasn't drugged enough to be hallucinating and a demon would have killed him by now; _ergo_, to use that fancy Latin word of Sam's, dad actually was _dad_. In which case…

"I'm sorry, sir."

John Winchester blinked rapidly at this penitent admission. "What do you mean, son?"

Dean looked at the bedcovers, not wanting to see his father's anger, or worse, disappointment in how much Dean had let him down. "About Chicago…I should've known something was whack with Meg Masters showing up out of nowhere. Even Sammy said that those sorts of coincidences don't happen to _our _family. I didn't figure it out in time to stop her hurting Sam…and she came damn close to killing you as well…I'm sorry, dad."

There was silence for several seconds and inwardly Dean cringed. He was the older brother, the firstborn son. It was his responsibility to watch his father's back and get between bad and his brother, and he had failed in both of those duties – sacred trusts – for no better reason than the Big Bad had been a pretty young blond thing instead of a skanky fiend with reptilian skin and humongous B.O. Sam's past wisecracks about him thinking with what was between his legs rather than his ears had suddenly struck home, too hard. One glance at Miss American as Apple Pie and he'd stopped being cautious, suspicious or in any way sensible as Maniacal Meg had led him around by his gonads – and his brother and father had paid the price for his dereliction.

"Dean…" the voice was quiet, and not harsh. "Dean…Look at me, son."

Reluctantly Dean raised his head and met his father's gaze; John Winchester's eyes were warm with…affection?

"Dean, you were in no way at fault…_ever._" John saw the shadows that moved in his son's eyes at that final word but knew they were the same as those in his own – _survivor guilt_, Missouri Moseley had explained.

There was nothing he could have done, no way he could have known, no way he could have fought back and won – then – against Mary's murderer, but grief didn't give a damn about logic. If only he hadn't fallen asleep in front of the TV…if only he had got up to see to Sam…if only they had never settled in Lawrence in the first place. People who survived terrible disasters or atrocities – the Twin Towers or the Nazi extermination camps like Auschwitz – all experienced that constant guilt that they had lived when women/children/others had died, and were tormented by the question – _why me?_ What's so special about me, that I should be spared?

"But Dad I…"

"Dean," John spoke as loudly as he dared in the quiet, acutely conscious of Sam's imminent return from the cafeteria where Nurse Castle had chivvied him, but he enunciated clearly, "I have never been more proud of you than I was in Chicago. I am not disappointed in you and I never have been."

Dean stared at him with a look of such pole-axed astonishment that John wanted to weep for his brave, tough, confident, strong son…with his self-esteem like pancake and an inferiority complex the size of the Grand Canyon.

"Never?" such hope…_daddy, say you love me_…a plea uttered in a single word.

John squeezed his son's hand. "Dean…it's easy to obey orders and follow commands when you _know_ the rationale, the reasons _why_. It's a lot harder to obey when you're not told what's going on." He looked at his son squarely, "I wish I could always take the time to explain, but sometimes that isn't possible. But you have always done as I've asked. That you obeyed me even when you didn't necessarily agree with my order nor really understand why I was asking of you what I did shows how much you trusted in me enough to believe that I knew what I was doing. That means far more to me than you can ever imagine."

Part of Dean was glad it was dark as he felt his cheeks heat with stunned delight; he blinked rapidly as his stupid eyes suddenly became moist; Dean Winchester did _not_ bawl like a baby. He had never even dreamed he would ever receive such benediction, had hoped only for the occasional 'good job, boy' accompanied by a clap on the back if he was lucky…he had long ago simply assumed that he was the expendable son. Certainly he was loved, but loved _less_, and to be honest he didn't _really_ mind that fact. He loved Sammy more than anything in the world, so how could he blame Dad for his greater affection too?

But he had to make sure that dad understood, "Sammy trusts you too, dad, he's just upset and scared and you know how that makes him…"

John Winchester kept his face calm even though he wanted nothing more than to hug his son tightly. He had followed Dean's train of thought as if it were writ large in neon. It was part of the reason why he was here; to help make sure that Dean's emotional health was – at least partially – as healed as his physical health. But, like always, he would have to restore the balance of power between his sons from behind the scenes.

"Of course I know – where you do think he gets it from? Your mom would never indulge what she called my macho hissy fits." John smiled at the bitter-sweet memories – Mary had never tolerated male intransigence. "Sam wants to protect me…and help me…but he knows it's too dangerous for us three to be too close right now. It's easier to be angry than to be afraid so…he vents…a _lot_."

Dean smiled back, feeling the tension lessen; it was important that Dad knew how much Sam cared about him. He hated the way they used to fight; tearing at each other with words instead of fists could be an even more brutal conflict than two guys pounding each other to pulp, and most people didn't realise it. Like dad had admitted, he and Sam were too alike in that way.

John sighed and shifted his weight in the chair, arching his back. "I should be going…"

"Just five more minutes?" Dean had no control as the words were just out of his mouth without his conscious decision.

For a moment John hesitated and Dean braced himself for a gentle refusal, but after a moment his father relaxed in his chair. "I guess a few more minutes won't hurt."

Dean knew he had a huge, happy smile on his face and didn't particularly care as he just lay quietly, basking in the presence and security of having his dad next to him…

**Chapter 10**

Dean scowled as the irritation finally dragged him from slumber. _Would someone please fix that radiator_…Blinking the sleep from his eyes he looked at the clock, which informed him it was now five-thirty in the morning.

Nobody should be awake at five-thirty in the morning. _There oughta be a law…_ but the wheezing was coming from somewhere close by. He turned and looked and saw…

Dad. Still in the same chair. Mouth open, nostrils flaring, chest rasping. He was also going to have one beautiful crick in the neck, though someone had attempted to alleviate things by putting a cushion between his head and his shoulder and covering him with a thin blanket.

Though – Dean certainly hadn't done it, and it was unlikely a staff member would have, which left…He turned his head to the other side. In the chair nearest the door sat Sam, also sound asleep and wheezing rhythmically in time with their father's exhalations as he gave Dean a bird's eye view of his tonsils.

Dean resolutely closed his eyes but immediately opened them again. No way was he going to get back to sleep with this pair serenading him from each side. He experienced a slightly mushy feeling that he firmly squashed as he saw how alike they were in sleep, despite their mutual conflict when awake.

Although, Dean suddenly thought of another reason why the Bible forbade people having sex before marriage – the Good Lord surely knew that for anyone indulging in some naughty pre-nuptial nookie, waking up to the sight of a drooling snorer – or should that be snoring drooler? – was more than enough to permanently put them off the idea of waking up to the _same_ sight every day for the next eighty-odd years. A divine command to keep your pants zipped until the wedding night gave you no chance to back out when you saw what was lying next to you the following morning.

He looked from father to brother and felt a pang of guilt. With bed-head hair and last night's make-up, some of his own bed mates had looked a lot less sexy in the cold light of day, but Dean had never before considered the visual _he _had presented to some poor chick blearily cracking open her mascara-gummed eyes after five solid hours of vodka-induced unconsciousness. If these two were representative of the Winchester men in repose, it was highly likely that the woman had been thinking, 'Oh my god, I slept with _that_?' just as much as he had. Belatedly, he sent a mental apology to every chick he had hustled out of an apartment/hotel/motel because at nine in the a.m. she'd no longer looked like Jennifer Aniston or Jada Pinkett-Smith realising now they had been probably been just as eager to leave the Heath Ledger/Matt Damon dude who had suddenly become Oliver Reed or Seinfeld's freak neighbour.

He had been awake for barely thirty seconds when Sam, with that preternatural awareness that had always existed between the brothers, woke instantly, looking immediately towards Dean to assess his condition. He shifted in the chair and winced as he stretched.

As Sam stirred, so did John Winchester, stretching in his chair and stopping as he started to straighten up with a groan, rubbing his neck and rotating his shoulder. "Aww."

Sam stood up from his chair, "Dad, tilt your head forward."

Obediently John did so and Sam moved behind his father, placing his hands evenly either side John's neck and using his thumbs and fingertips to give a gentle circular massage that made John's eyes almost cross with bliss.

"Dad, you're _drooling_," Dean chided good-humouredly.

Sam sniggered and stepped away as John arched and stretched till his joints popped. "That was wonderful…" He shook his head, "I keeping hoping if I persevere my body will forget I'm about thirty years too late for sleeping in the back of a car…"

"Bring your gear to Room 93 at the Beech Motel," Sam offered promptly, "it's a twin-bedded room and after Dean, you can't have any habits that would gross me out."

"Thanks," John accepted with grateful alacrity.

As the moment lingered, stilted awkwardness materialised in full diva costume for a virtuoso performance, only to be yanked abruptly off stage by the shepherd's crook of the hospital room door clicking as the knob gave a slight rattle.

Instantly Sam and John's heads snapped towards the door, their stances shifting and almost swelling as they prepared to defend. At that moment both were pure predators. Nurse Ruth Castle, sticking her head around the door, suddenly saw them overlaid with the image of powerful lions, dangerous and all tamped down menace to protect the injured one of their pride. She blinked and instantly the image was gone. Sam's welcome smile restored his face to such boyishness that you could – almost – believe you had imagined the merciless eyes and the coiled lethality, but ancient instincts that once warned about sabre-toothed danger had just suddenly woken up and smelled the coffee. Ruth continued to smile but did not venture further into the room and didn't make any sharp movements, suppressing an urge to mutter, '_nice kitties, don't eat the friendly nurse_'.

"I just wanted to see if you were all awake. Dr Field was wishing to come and see you as early as possible this morning, if that's all right with you?"

"Fine…is there a problem?" Sam asked.

"Oh no, it's about Dean's physiotherapy. I'll fetch him." She withdrew.

_Physiotherapy_…Dean bit his lip... they didn't have the time, they didn't have the money. "I'll be okay," he stated, "as soon as the cuts have healed up. I don't need any Physio, Dad –"

Sam instantly bristled, glaring at their father as he retorted to his brother's weak claim, "You came within an inch of losing your left arm and leg, not to mention singing soprano!" His voice rose more stridently as he silently challenged their father. "You're not leaving this hospital until you're fit enough to do cartwheels!"

John Winchester was acutely aware of the way the water carafe on the bedside cabinet next to Dean trembled slightly, like that scene with the glass of water in **_Jurassic Park _**where Jeff Goldblum realises the T-Rex is a-comin'. Neither of his sons noticed it at all, and John kept his attention firmly focussed on Sam.

"Dad, really, I –"

"No Dean," John vetoed firmly, "Sam's right. You need to leave here in the best shape you can, and that means physio."

Under any other circumstances, his sons' comical twin expressions of astonishment at his siding with _Sam_ would have been, well, comical.

But right now John's heart twisted at the flash of relief Dean couldn't hide as he acknowledged his own past guilt in often treating an injured Dean like a Marine PFC instead of the child he'd been.

Sam opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, uncertain what to do now the fight he'd been ready for simply didn't materialise, but at that moment there was a brisk knock heralding the entry of Nurse Castle and Dr Field.

_Continued in Chapter 11…_

© 2006, Catherine D Stewart


	6. Chapters 11 & 12

_**Disclaimer, Summary & Rating:** _Please see Chapter 1.

**MILES TO GO BEFORE I SLEEP**

**Chapter 11**

Dr Field took in their looks of worry at his precipitously early visit and rapidly explained that he had just taken on an urgent case that would take up most of the rest of the day, in order to allay their fears. Ruth Castle had found him last night with a pleased expression on her face to let him know that the bar on John Barnes visiting his elder son had been lifted by the same person who had instigated it – the younger boy Samuel.

Dr Field was also pleased; he found himself liking the trio. Though with gruffly matching macho exteriors, their care and concern for each other was evident; they listened to medical instructions without truculence and despite friendly flirting, neither of the young men had treated Ruth Castle with anything less than the respect due her position as a highly accomplished nurse, instead of the lewd and overtly racist commentary she often received. They also called their father 'Sir' with a genuine respect all too often sadly lacking in today's egocentric brats. Dr Field Senior was the kindest and most softly-spoken father a man could ever wish for, but Dr Field Junior's butt would have been blistered red raw for a week if he'd ever whiningly called his Pops 'man', 'dude', 'guy' or 'Frederick' as a lot of the ungrateful brats he encountered these days petulantly did.

He reassured them that due to how well Dean was healing, the physiotherapy would only need about a week to ten days – it was just to ease Dean back in gently after spending nearly a week in bed and ingesting nothing more than soup and soft foods. If Dean _tried_ to stand up right now he'd keel over like a felled pine and his startled stomach would forcefully eject a burger or anything too complex for it to handle.

"We can get you started tomorrow," Dr Field assured Dean heartily as he left to start on his new case.

"Um…thanks…" Dean and John exchanged anxious looks as Castle and Field departed.

"I've got a cash-stash in my trunk," John mused half-to-himself, "and there are shelf-stacking jobs going at the local K-Mart…" But he knew it wasn't nearly enough; in the United States, life was cheap…being seriously ill or injured was hideously expensive.

"The Finchley credit cards wouldn't have covered medical insurance anyway," Dean fretted and glared at Sam, "We're going to have to do a runner the instant they realise we can't pay."

"We have paid," Sam told them both flatly, "There's no problem with the insurance."

"Did _you _pull that bank robbery in Springville three days ago?" asked John with not entirely joking facetiousness.

Dean stared at his brother and then went deathly pale. "Lift up your shirt!"

"What?" Sam recoiled from the barked command.

"I want to see your back, lift up your shirt, _right now_!" Dean's tone edged perilously close to hysterical.

Utterly confused but not willing to prolongue his brother's evident and acute distress, Sam obediently turned his back to Dean's bed and crossed his arms over, gripping the hems of his T-shirt and loose over-shirt each side of his torso at the waist as if he were about to pull them up and over his head. Instead he raised the garments up until they were level with his chest, allowing Dean and by extension John Winchester to look at his spine and lower back.

"No scars, thank god." Dean slumped back into his pillow in relief. "I thought for a minute you'd done something really stupid like sold a kidney…"

Sam released his hold on his clothing and tugged them back into place as he turned to face his brother; even Dad had gone a little white as the implications of Dean's statement sank in. Sam shook his head at the pair of them, knowing he would have to tell them…not that Dean's sudden terror had been entirely out of the ball park – he _would_ have sold his internal organs, hell he would have sold _himself_ in every piss-reeking back alley from here to New York had it been necessary to fund Dean's recovery.

He sighed exaggeratedly, folding his arms like he was the stern father and they were naughty schoolboys…like some guy had said _it's all in the delivery_…"Samuel John Barnes has sufficient medical insurance to pay for his brother's medical care."

"How?" John asked his son.

Sam shrugged. "At college after I was legal I gambled…once. I placed a series of accumulator bets on some horse races…and I won."

Dean's eyes narrowed. "How much?"

Sam blew out a breath, "A bit over $20,000."

"U.S.?" Dean exclaimed.

"Yeah."

"Wow." Dean shook his head, "and that was _before_ you got The Shining?That settles it – dad, we have _got _to go to Vegas."

John shook his head. "Sam…that's amazing but twenty-k…" _isn't even a drop in the ocean of what this is costing_.

"I created the Barnes identity and put the money in offshore long-term accumulation investment trusts." Sam explained, causing a prolonged pause of baffled silence.

"Do you speak nerd?" Dean asked their father hopefully.

Rolling his eyes at Dean, Sam replied, "The financial minutia of it all isn't important. What is relevant is that Samuel John Barnes is _bona fide_. He lives a bucolic life at a PO Box in Stanford; he has a bank account and pays tax on it and he has top-rate medical insurance for himself, his brother Dean Thomas Barnes and their father, John Dean Barnes. I'll give you each a Pacificare® Card this afternoon."

"All three of us are covered?" John asked in astonishment.

"Yes…" Sam hesitated, "…just try not to get injured too often."

"How 'not' often?" John pressed.

"About once a year…" Sam shrugged at Dean's glower, "…it's accumulation investment – the less you take out the more cash accumulates for later when you might _really_ need it."

For a moment he allowed himself to bask in their admiration, then Sam suggested, "Dad, let me take your car to the motel and I'll get the cards, you stay with Dean and see if you can get the specifics of the physio?"

John nodded agreement and gave Sam the keys, moving to sit back by Dean as Sam left and exchanging a relieved look with his eldest son. They'd survived for years by cash-in-hand jobs, cheques from grateful clients, hustling pool and credit card fraud; being able to lie in a hospital _without_ worrying about how he was going to wangle skipping out on the bill had long ago been related to the drawer marked 'impossible fantasy' in John Winchester's mind.

**Chapter 12 **

Sam stopped off at the dry cleaner's en route to dad's old clunker in the hospital parking lot, buoyed by a sensation of relief. What was that old saying…_Truth, shielded by a bodyguard of lies…_Fortunately Dean and Dad had bought the story, but Sam had been acutely aware of how precisely he'd needed to mix truth and lies together to get it past not just Dean's but Dad's finely-honed BS-meter, and unlike Dean, lying wasn't his forte.

Although it wasn't exactly Dean's either, Sam acknowledged in his brother's defence as he put his jacket in Dad's car and started it up. It was just the different styles of deceit. Dean was no good at straightforward lies, but excelled at complex duplicity.

That wasn't so much because he was lying but because he was _acting_. Dean became the character he was pretending to be – cop, US Marshal, FBI agent. Sam knew that in Dean's head he had created entire family backgrounds and character scenarios for these fictitious individuals and that meant Dean was able to make them 'real' in a sense that just trying to bluff his way through wouldn't have.

In a way, Dean was a chameleon, a sort of _emotional_ shape-shifter, shedding one character to become another as needed. It was something he was good at because it was something he had always been able to do. Sam remembered Dean's _rolling stone gathers no moss_ line back when Sam had insisted they go and help out Zack, and in hindsight had realised that Dean had always, essentially, been alone.

He certainly hadn't been unpopular or bullied during their intermittent periods of formal schooling. Dean was bright and charismatic and witty; students and teachers alike reacted well to his quips and his lazy charm and boyish grin. Even when he was a teenager he'd never inspired hostility from other boys due to his burgeoning good looks and incredibly he had even been accepted by parents. Moms and dads knew that Dean was a _safe_ 'bad boy', like The Fonz after two seasons of living in close proximity to the Cunninghams.

He had just enough James Dean _Rebel Without A Cause_ attitude to make a girl feel thrillingly risky, yet they and their daddies knew he would never push any girl into anything she was not comfortable with, nor tip a vial of Rohypnol into a woman's drink. Indeed, at the last high school Sam had ever properly attended, when he was twelve, seventeen-year-old Dean had come to pick him up in his then 'new' Impala (as usual with the Winchesters, Dean's Driver's Ed pass paperwork had been forged by Dad's friend, Pastor Jim, ironic considering he was an excellent, instinctual driver). It was the night the _other _kids were all enjoying the Junior Prom.

Already his pride and joy, the car had been obtained for him from a client as 'payment' by John Winchester who, for once, had seen the naked longing in his eyes that faithful, obedient, good son Dean would never verbalise. Money had been a rare commodity during their childhood and Sam had no memory of Dean ever asking their father for any toy or present. Somehow there was always a trinket or a candy bar for Sam's birthday and Christmas, and nowadays Sam wondered how often Dean had gone hungry himself or how young his brother had started working in violation of child labour laws to get money for Sam.

Sam had lingered in the school, resentfully knowing that John Winchester would be uprooting them again within days, and spitefully hoping one of the jocks would take his keys to the Impala's paintwork. But Dean had gone up to them with his usual smirk and good-ole'-boy charm and had them eating out of his hand – right up to the moment Dean had suddenly shot across to the buffet and got hold of one kid, a handsome but spoiled brat named Willis or something. He'd called the kid out there and then for slipping something in a girl's drink. 'Willis' had kicked up a My-daddy's-the-Mayor stink but had tried to smash the glass when Dean picked it up and handed it to the Science Ed teacher for testing. The test had come back with an illegal sedative, and three girls from the poorest part of town came forward to accuse the kid of rape, stating he had told them nobody would believe 'white trash ho's'. Several parents in the town had given John Winchester large cheques as a leaving gift as thanks for his son's sharp eyed-vigilance.

But people who thought they knew Dean Winchester well had no idea that they were basically looking into a mirror, that they never breached the surface. Dean simply reflected back what he knew they expected or wanted to see, the real him untouched as if behind one of those double-sided mirrors where you can see out but nobody can see you. _When we killed Mary, Dean's eyes bled too_…Before that, Sam would have bet his life that he knew Dean better than Dean knew himself; he'd never asked his brother, but had acknowledge he didn't know everything about Dean as he'd assumed.

John Winchester had had his obsession, Sam had had Dean, but Dean had been alone…and always braced for the day Sam would abandon him like their father essentially had for longer and longer periods. _I'm know I'm a freak and one day everyone will leave me_ – the words had been spat at Sam by the shape-shifter, but the thoughts – the _belief_ – had been Dean's.

Sometimes Sam wondered if Dean had had imaginary friends to keep the loneliness at bay, but of course if he had Dean would never mention them. It would have been all too likely that John Winchester would have tried to take them out with that old .45 revolver of his.

Speaking of which…Sam turned his father's care into the parking lot of the motel next to the bay where the Impala would be once he collected it from the garage. When it came to his duplicity, Sam always made sure to stick as close to the truth as possible; being a plausible liar wasn't about dishonesty, it was about _presentation_. When he was a kid in some town somewhere, there'd been an old Sunday School teacher who'd explained sin to the children with a simple yet effective illustration…_The reason we all sin is because sin is served up deliciously! Sin is not nasty or ugly to our eyes nor tastes bitter on our tongues. The Devil does not plonk down before us a dirty plate of cold, raw cabbage and a wooden spoon and bark at us to eat; Satan lays the table with linen and silver and candles and fine china; he presents us with a bowl of hot cherry pie and fresh cream and whispers in our ear, "'Go on…just one bite.'" _

That was it – it was all about how you presented the illusion; smoke and mirrors, sleight of hand; get everyone focussing on what you're saying about Point A here so they're distracted when you skim over Point B there – always serve them cherry pie and cream, never cabbage.

It was imperative neither Dean nor dad was aware of the full situation, that the 'bit' over $20,000 had amounted to $82,700. Nor had those sedate long-term investments come first. He'd taken the lot, all $102,000 of it bar the $700, to investment bankers Goldman Sachs and gambled on repeated high-risk-high-return investments and re-investments. When he stopped six months later, his 100-K had become $12.7 million, U.S. He'd used $1.7 million to set up the Barnes identity and everything he might need: offshore trust funds that dribbled income in a monthly bank account, top-flight medical insurance for three men, long-term Blue Chip stock investments and even pension-index-linked savings accounts.

It was of course highly unlikely that John Winchester or either of his sons would live long enough to be old age pensioners. It _was_ highly likely, assuming Dad or Dean wasn't killed outright, that they would be permanently disabled or left needing 24-hour-care in their lifelong war against evil. As things stood, they would have nothing to look forward to except for soup kitchens, VA charity hospitals – in John's case – or wheeling themselves round back-alleys on wooden boards in the middle of winter. This way, that nightmare would never happen.

It had taken a further five million to clear John and Dean's criminal backgrounds. It had taken finesse and time to hack into credit card company databases and locate police warrants and credit blacklists for the Winchester terrible twosome. Then Sam had written hefty cheques as Barnes, coincidentally placing the blame on a now-deceased, mentally ill cousin – the same get-out clause they now used when anyone connected dead murder suspect Dean Winchester (really the shape-shifter) with the live, genuine article.

Some of the companies had banked the cheques but spitefully kept the warrants/blacklist, so Sam had had to go back in and erase these. It had taken another million and change to match up the Winchester men's arsenal – enough to invade Iraq…again – of fake licences and permits to computer databases. Of course, if anyone felt that neither the permit nor what their computer screen was telling them was sufficient, they would find no paperwork in the basement paper files, but Sam knew it wasn't likely. People tended to trust the screen in front of them, and a good fake gun licence was indistinguishable from the real thing in the 'flesh' so to speak.

The rest of the money had been split in several ways. Making Sam, John and Dean Barnes 'real' and legal without resorting to criminality or forgery had cost a pretty penny, as had the complicated route giving Sam complete Power of Attorney over Dean's person and welfare – and vice versa – just as he had yelled at his father when he'd initially banned him from Dean's hospital room.

As long as Sam didn't use the funds for illegal purposes, he was committing no crime in using the surname Barnes instead of Winchester, but the legalese had given him headaches for weeks. The most important aspect was making sure the money went to where it was supposed to in the case of Sam getting killed – a not unlikely occurrence. Once a month, Sam placed a phone call to a firm of highly respected lawyers, informing them that Samuel Barnes was alive and his current location. If the firm did not receive that phone call, they were to wait forty-eight hours after the deadline and then go to Samuel Barnes' last location. Details of Dean and John Winchester's appearance, vehicles, etc., were locked in the firm's vault. Once it was established that Samuel John Barnes Winchester was deceased, his entire estate (less a hefty fee to the firm for enduring the current shenanigans) would be split evenly between two very rich men – John Dean Winchester and Dean Thomas Winchester – or it would all go to the survivor.

After that extravaganza had been settled, the remainder paid for Sam's college costs and he had placed the last bit back into the Barnes' accounts, intending to use some of it for his and Jess's wedding…

Sam veered away from too painful reminiscence as he placed his father's gear on the bed in the room. The point was that he had no intention of revealing any of that to his father or brother. Belief that they were wanted felons for credit card fraud in over a dozen states, a healthy concern for medical expenses and a lack of knowledge that they were 'legally' able to tote around all that weaponry would keep Dad and Dean sharp and on their toes and make sure they didn't become complacent. The fact they thought there was no safety net would have them trying a lot more carefully to keep their balance on the tightrope.

Calling a cab and locking the room, Sam went back to the garage, where he found that they had been true to their word. Dean's car looked like it had just rolled out of a 1967 Chevy showroom instead of being battered by the vagaries of human society and its latest eccentric owner for over thirty-five years.

Paying them a hefty tip for their trouble, Sam got in and started her up, finding the Impala to be a purring panther of a car powerfully devouring the mileage back to the hospital. _Dean's going to be drooling all over the leather for weeks when he sees this, _Sam thought happily as he pulled into the hospital garage.

_Continued in Chapter 13…_

© 2006, Catherine D Stewart


	7. Chapters 13 & 14

_**Disclaimer, Summary & Rating:** _Please see Chapter 1.

**MILES TO GO BEFORE I SLEEP**

**Chapter 13**

Dean Winchester glared furiously at his brother as he jabbed a finger at the 'Regular size' Starbucks® coffee cup in the middle of his hospital bed's food tray. "What the _hell _is _this_ supposed to be!"

True to Dr Field's word, Dean had been able to start physiotherapy the next day, and it had been unpleasant for all concerned. Despite the good healing progress of his injuries, the fact remained that Dean had been bedridden for nearly two weeks and had ingested only minimal nutrition in that time. In short, he'd been as weak as a day-old kitten, managing less than five minutes standing on his feet and he was so exhausted at the end of the first day that he'd had had to accept the convene/catheter apparatus again because he was too tired for his body to awake him from sleep should he need to use a toilet during the night.

His weakness had been a bad shock to him, even though in true Dean-style he had utterly ignored it; the physiotherapist, a healthy, buff California Surf Dude type named 'Mac' (whether first or last unknown) had not allowed him to continue when Dean kept trying to push it. Mac had told Sam and John that his patients tended to fall into two categories – the defeatist 'I'm never going to get any better' group who had to be pushed and pushed along to make the effort - and the in-serious-denial 'I don't have time for this' types who were so locked into damage control that they tried to force their bodies to react 'properly' within the first two minutes. Since Dean had never backed down from a fight in his life, there was no prize for guessing which group he came into.

After one frustrated outburst at 'Mac' in the Rehab Therapy clinic that Dean secretly knew made him come off like a toddler having a temper tantrum (and which had brought an ominous frown to his father's face like he was seriously considering taking his shoe or his belt to a certain son's butt), Sam had defused the situation by telling Dean – deliberately using the sickly sweet tone and baby-talk of a grown-up addressing a whining three-year-old – that if he was a good _little _boy and did _all_ his exercises, Sam would persuade nice Nurse Castle to relax the 'no caffeine' rule that was driving Dean crazy; he had only two…_not _addictions, Dean Winchester didn't _need _anything ever…but a guy could never have too much caffeine or painkillers on hand…the latter craving wasn't a problem around here, but he _needed _his pure black Blue Mountain double-cold-pressed fresh-ground super-caffeinated pick-me-up.

Dean had known perfectly well that Sam was deliberately aggravating and tormenting him for the simple reason that an angry mind exists only for itself. As long as Dean was concentrating on getting back into shape so he could beat the crap out of Sam, he wasn't slipping into depression and futile worrying over whether his injuries were more serious or disabling than the doctors were admitting, and so on.

But Sam had promised him _coffee_ not this…this…

"It's a latte," Sam said as if explaining TV to a remote jungle tribesman, taking a sip of his own Super-sized double mocha.

"You promised me _coffee!_" Dean practically howled the word in anguish.

"It is coffee."

"It's _hot milk_ with flavouring!" yelled Dean in outrage. "I'm not friggin' four!"

"Then stop acting like it!" Sam shot back.

Dean ground his teeth and wished he dared simply throw the thing at his so-dead-as-soon-as-I-can-catch-him brother. However, not only would it be grossly insulting and unfair to Ruth Castle and the staff who had to clean up the mess (and nothing gave you that lingering unpleasant stench of decaying organic matter like milk) but such a spiteful, childishly vindictive display would have had John Winchester hauling him up out the bed and laying a belt across his backside, injuries or no injuries.

"Oh well, if that's how you feel…" Sam sighed exaggeratedly and moved as if to remove the cup, not hiding his grin as Dean bared his teeth at him and curled one hand round the cup defensively…at this point, he'd take what he could get.

An odd noise intruded into their battle of wills, a strange sound, almost rusty like a long unused gate suddenly opened. Dean and Sam turned their heads; seated in the chair by the window, watching the byplay between his sons, John Winchester was chuckling softly. Both younger men were rendered speechless by the sight; their father's two default expressions were either sadness or anger, it had been years – literally – since either could remember him genuinely _smiling_.

"Do you remember 13th June 1997?" John asked them as he took in their gaping guppy-faces. "It was 3:20pm in the afternoon."

Dean and Sam exchanged mutually questioning glances but came up blank. People who could instantly recall their movements on a particularly day 'six weeks in the past' or on a specified past date remained strictly the purview of TV cop shows and murder-mysteries like **_Diagnosis Murder, Perry Mason, Columbo, Monk_ **and so forth. In real life people could no more reel off what they were doing six months ago last Thursday than they could sprout wings and fly.

John grinned at their consternation, "We were camping up in the backwoods…of New Hampshire as it happened…" still nothing…"Sam realised he was six feet tall."

Ah. Memory came flooding back and Sam actually laughed at their father's words even as Dean growled. _Now_ he remembered. In June 1997 he'd been a month away from turning fifteen, an eagerly awaited birthday as Dean had been nineteen since that March. They hadn't even had enough money for a night in the sleaziest pay-by-the-minute motel/brothel, so they'd been camping out in the backwoods, keeping out of sight of main roads and officious sheriffs and state troopers eager to wield their minor authority by moving on the vagrants.

Dad had gone into the woods to get some rabbits or woodcocks for the evening stew while Dean and Sam had been securing their battered old veteran of a tent (a holdover from John's time in the Marine Corps), collecting firewood and preparing the foodstuffs they'd collected that morning – some mushrooms, sweet potatoes, Bilberries and Loganberries with a few strips of willow bark for 'roughage'. Also of course, willow bark was the 'active ingredient' in aspirin, but cost 99.9 less than what you plucked off the supermarket shelf in the pretty packaging.

The Winchesters had eaten stranger concoctions. In fact, spending their lives travelling around the continental United States, raiding orchards, barns and poultry coops, working on Indian Reservations and foraging for whatever fauna and flora they could in America's deep forests and rivers and ocean sandbanks, meant that their diet had probably been vastly healthier and more nutritious than that of the average white American. Their food had not been pumped full of antibiotics and pesticides and growth promoters and preservatives nor bulked with flavourings and emulsifiers and artificial sugars. Nor had the two boys ever been _really, _deeply, gnawingly hungry, despite the odd missed meal, even when there had been no money. To people used to hunting things seven-feet tall with six-inch razor talons and a mouth like Jaws, bagging a deer, snaring hares and freshwater salmon and wood pigeons wasn't exactly the ultimate challenge of Man versus Beast.

Sam couldn't even remember what he'd been fiddling with when he happened to glance over towards Dean and he suddenly realised that he was in fact an inch _taller_ than his brother. For a moment the shock had frozen him immobile and then with a gleeful whoop he had launched himself full at Dean. Knocked back on his ass with all the air forced out of his lungs by the impact of a hefty teenager colliding with him at speed, it had thus been the work of an instant for Sam to straddle his gasping sibling and use his (slightly) greater reach to pin Dean's arms as he crowed in delight about his height advantage.

Victory had only lasted a fleeting second until Dean got his breath back and unceremoniously heaved Sam off of him to deliver some payback, but that had not been the point, the point had been _taller_. No matter how unmercifully Dean had tickled the screeching Sam, that inch of height was there to stay. The two boys' roughhousing had come to an end when they looked around and found Dad, who had come back unnoticed, standing there watching them with an almost unique expression – a broad grin that had made him look, fleetingly, like the ordinary, average man-in-the-street John Winchester of Lawrence, Kansas, before Evil had made the mistake of killing his beloved and adored wife.

**Chapter 14**

That night had been one the best Sam had ever spent – a sort of silent camaraderie had enveloped the camp fire and John Winchester and his two children became, subtly, the 'Winchester men' instead. Dad had almost apologetically suggested that Dean took after the Winchester side – the Winchesters were shorter, but built for stamina and strength; Mary's side had been the 'gazelle guys', taller, leaner, built for speed.

Since Dean had been the same height at nineteen as he'd reached at fifteen, the truth of this surmise had been more or less already proven then. He was also and still remained, physically stronger than Sam. Sam had obsessively measured his height and each new inch resulted in a sparring match with Dean, who always won the wrestling match after recovering from the initial sneaky pounce-and-pin attempt by his tenacious brother.

Now Sam grinned even more broadly as he looked at Dean in the hospital bed, his brother, almost uniquely, glaring at _Dad_ who was still chuckling. His finest hour had come when he was fifteen and 2.7 inches taller than Dean. The two boys had been at some Country Goose Fair, mainly because the otherwise suspicious-of-strangers rural folk couldn't exercise this normal trait at such a large gathering and they could score plentiful quantities of free food. Sam had soon found himself making some seriously significant eye contact with a pretty brunette of a similar age, one of those milk-skinned, corn-fed buxom types reared on a diet of wholesome country air who would pop out 15 kids like shelling peas and still live to be 190 or something.

He could still remember the sheer terrifying glee of strolling up to where Dean was awaiting his turn at the rifle range, with his arm through that of Miss Country Fair and expansively introducing her to, '…and this is my little brother, Dean.' The nuances had completely gone over her head and she had automatically assumed Sam to be speaking in a genealogical rather than literal context. Sam's finishing touch to his 'let's thump the starving grizzly in the face' game had been to reach out and playfully _ruffle_ Dean's hair.

After that, Sam had made sure to spend the next couple of hours as Limpet Boy to Miss Country Fair. The good manners and social courtesies that John Winchester had rigorously instilled into both his sons with more than words constrained Dean's retaliation to the point where he could only seethe silently as he stalked his brother and tried to make it appear he wasn't doing so.

Already having second thoughts about the wisdom of goading the moody tiger that was his brother, Sam was ready for him and the instant he successfully offloaded Miss Country Fair into the waiting arms of her equally buxom corn-fed mama and sisters, he had taken to his heels, with Dean hot on his. Only when both were gasping and panting had he stopped long enough for Dean to catch him, and for several moments they had simply stood in the middle of some hilly meadow in Nowhere, Illinois, bracing their arms on their upper legs like marathon runners as they recuperated, their breath white puffs in the surprisingly chilly summer night air.

Finally Sam had reached out and hooked an arm round Dean's neck, taking a step closer. _You're the best big brother in the world_…corny but it had worked, because it had also been whispered with unmistakeable sincerity. Dean had growled low in his throat, like papa lion still undecided as to whether he was going to swat the cub, but after a moment had reached his arm around Sam's waist and returned the loose embrace. For a few minutes they had simply stood in silence, mutually sheltering in the warmth of the human contact, before Dean had pulled away and called him a jerk - in the gentlest and most tender tone.

It had been one of the last good memories of Sam's teenage years. Miss Country Fair and the whole deal had refuelled Sam's ever-smouldering desire for a 'normal', settled life, but his growing maturity had made him realise that he was in essence holding Dean back from the childhood and youth that Dean had never been able to have because he had always been responsible for Sam's safety, his welfare, his wellbeing. Without Sam in the picture, Dean would finally be able to actually live a little, instead of spending his nights at twenty like a forty-year-old basic-wage factory worker with a wife, 6 kids, and arrears on the mortgage.

Now he offered, "Look, I'll go and see Ruth Castle and see if we can your dinner bumped up to something a bit more substantial than broth and a roll, huh?"

"Steak pie and fries…" Dean's eyes lit up, ready to – almost – forgive Sam the latte for real man's food.

"Chicken salad," Sam countered firmly as he left the room, ignoring the way Dean blobbed his tongue out at him.

For a moment after the door swung shut behind him John remained immersed in the memories, until Dean spoke very softly.

"Will you tell me why it killed Jessica?"

John's eyes flew to his son's face in shock at the question. Dean regarded him sombrely and unflinchingly. _Will you tell me_…always the good son, always the obedient son; acknowledgement of his father's knowledge, but the question phrased in such a way as to submissively accept a negative reply – even when he had considerable right to _demand_ an explanation, having far more than earned one in his short but grim life.

As John continued to stare at him Dean raised his right hand and brushed his first and second fingertips against the silver charm of his necklace in a nervous, autonomic gesture, an unconscious desire for reassurance. The reflex action made John Winchester's heart clench hard within his chest. He was achingly familiar with that charm, and knew that nothing this side of hell would make Dean voluntarily remove it under any circumstances.

Most small children were content with Velcro-strip fastening sneakers. But Dean wore lace-ups, so three-year-old Sammy flatly refused to wear anything other than lace ups, even though he _couldn't _lace up. Having spent Sam's babyhood dealing with Dean – the perfect child whose response to any direction was silent, unquestioning and above all unhesitating obedience – John had been unprepared for the obstinacy of the toddler who could barely walk and who had only just learned to talk.

If Sam wouldn't wear Velcro sneakers, he could go barefoot until he learned his lesson. Even at this moment of taut tension, part of John's mind wryly mused that in hindsight, he should have recognised that first butting of heads as the shape of things to come. But despite sharp gravel or too hot blacktop or wet grass that had irritated his baby feet, Sam's only response was to grit his milk teeth, jut out his lower lip and stubbornly refuse to back down in the silent war of wills between him and daddy.

It had been Dean who had brought peace, again the first instance of a pattern that remained to this day – ever the buffer and bridge between his father and his brother. From some trash heap Dean had found a battered old Army boot and a length of leather string, which he had given to Sam so he could practice his knots…whilst persuading the toddler to wear the Velcro sneakers _in the meantime._ John, consumed entirely by his obsession to the virtual exclusion of all peripherals at that point, had barely noticed his baby son's – apparent – capitulation, nor appreciated the nights of peaceful silence as Sam sat with the boot in front of him, laboriously but determinedly practising lacing the boot.

Eventually, he'd succeeded, and the next time they'd had money for clothing, Dean had quietly picked a pair of lace-ups off the shelf in Sam's size. The boot was long since a memory...but one night Sam had picked up Dean's precious silver charm and carefully threaded the leather string through it. Toddling over to Dean he had imperiously clambered up on the startled boy's lap and put the leather around his neck. Dean had bent his head docilely, remaining patiently unmoving while Sam laboriously tied the leather string into a small knot at his nape, the little face deeply scowling with the effort and his tiny pink tongue sticking out comically from between his lips slightly as he concentrated.

And Dean had never taken the necklace off of his own volition since - shower, sleep, sickness…the necklace remained around his neck, and remained the visible, though subtle, symbol of Sam's dominance over his older brother. But on that night, as he watched the three-year-old tying that knot, John Winchester had finally recalled Missouri Moseley's tart advice along with the explanations she had provided about what was _really _out there, in the dark. Things that had been overlooked or meaningless at the time coalesced before his Mind's Eye. He had been so scared for his baby boy and yet as he'd watched the scene he had finally realised how that terror and anxiety had made him overlook the danger to his never-troubling obedient son, the great threat to _Dean_…

Sam.

_Continued in Chapter 15…_

© 2006, Catherine D Stewart


	8. Chapters 15 & 16

_**Disclaimer, Summary & Rating:** _Please see Chapter 1.

**MILES TO GO BEFORE I SLEEP**

**Chapter 15**

Dean lowered his eyes to the bedclothes, taking the silence for paternal refusal. In a heartbeat the moment would pass, and Dean would never ask again.

"I can't prove it," John said, slightly aware of starting in the middle, "but…Jessica _may…_have been killed…because…" there was no way to say it except to say it… "…she _might _have been pregnant."

He watched the words strike home in his son's eyes – the pupils reacting to the shock, the astonishment, and that faint, momentary flare of grief for nephew or niece Dean would never know.

Unconsciously John twisted his wedding ring around his finger, "And I will _never_ be able to _prove _it either…you know…"

Dean gave a single sharp nod. Words were unnecessary. He and Sam had never been held or even questioned over Jessica's death. As far as anyone was aware, Sam had gone away for a relaxing, post-exam vacation weekend with his elder brother, Dean Winchester and had not arrived back at Stanford until after the fact. In the middle of the night nobody had seen Sam enter his and Jessica's apartment building or Dean drag him out minutes later.

In the furore of fire trucks nobody had noticed the black Impala parked way down the block in the blacker night with the two human shadows next to it. Sam had been 'informed' of the tragedy when he had 'arrived' at dawn. But the fire had been incredibly intense – something that had baffled the fire investigator, who even as he ruled it accidental due to a 'wiring' fault still noted that such immediate intensity only usually came from accelerant-fuelled fires in arson cases. Jessica had been identifiable only via dental records and her remains had been located on what was left of the bedding, as if she had merely been asleep when the fire started. Impossible even to identify the sex of the victim, ascertaining that another person had also died due to being in her womb would likewise never be possible.

Of all the explanations why the monster had murdered Sam's girlfriend, that had been one that had never crossed Dean's mind. He said hesitantly, "I don't think that could be…"

His father gave a soft snort, "Come on, Dean, 'safe sex' is only ever really '_mostly _safe sex'. The only 100 categorically foolproof method of _not_ ending up with a social disease or a child is _not _to have sex. You should know, you were the one who gave Sam his sex education."

"_Dad_…" Dean squirmed.

Despite the seriousness, John found a small lightness within himself, "Though to be honest I wish I could have heard _your_ birds-and-bees spiel…"

"_Daaaad…_"

"…considering you were hooked up with that dominatrix chick at the time…" John shook his head, "only you, son – all of fifteen years old and you're hot 'n' heavy with Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. How _did_ you explain to a ten-year-old why hurting people was bad – except when she did it to you?"

"Very badly," Dean conceded, "why you think we split up?"

He tagged on the quip, even though that hadn't been the reason for the abrupt cessation of his first 'real' sexual relationship. Ten-year-old Sam _had_ been fundamentally unable to grasp why it was bad to hurt people, except when…what had her name been...had bruised him. All he had seen was that the weirdly dressed bad lady was hurting his brother – with his consent was irrelevant. Sam had taken to hovering protectively around Dean; sometimes when they were watching TV or sleeping side by side, Dean had felt his brother's gaze upon him and found that Sam wasn't watching the TV or sleeping but looking at the faint bruises around Dean's wrists or on his arms with a fierce yet anxious expression.

His constant presence had irritated Dean's playmate until one night she had pulled out a pair of handcuffs and not-jokingly suggested they tie up the kid and let him watch the fun. Dean had ended the relationship on the spot, but it had marked the beginnings of Sam's awareness of sex, even though he wouldn't hit puberty for another few years. And it had been Dean rather than their father who had provided Sam with instruction and information as required, because often John Winchester simply wasn't around when his younger son reached male milestones.

Going into their rented house's bathroom one night and finding Sam perilously close to slitting his own throat with Dean's razor because he had watched Dean shave had precipitated a lesson in that aspect of male personal grooming. Dean had shown Sam how to practise kissing on his hand; how to unhook a back-clasping bra or a front one with style, how to dance, how to practise rolling on a condom using a banana and a comprehensive grounding in a thousand other things not covered in _any_ school Sex Ed lesson.

John followed the flickering emotions crossing Dean's face as his son considered the theory. Dean had also taught Sam much more subtle things about sex, too. About how sex was not fun unless _both _enjoyed it. How some girls didn't _really_ want to give you what they were offering, but did so because of peer pressure or because they didn't feel good enough about themselves as a person to believe you would be interested in them otherwise. John had a pretty good idea just how _few_ of Dean's long stream of girlfriends he had actually 'slept with' in a sexual sense, because that wasn't what Dean was about; underneath that James Dean swagger he was really Don Quixote.

Dean was a secretly chivalrous knight albeit in rusty armour, a dirty-faced angel who picked up the emotionally bruised and mentally crumpled woman from the ground and brushed her down and supported her; his 'safely dangerous' mystique made her feel positive and good about herself and who she was once more and, when she was strong enough to go on her way in the world again, he simply faded into the shadows…alone. _Oh my Mary, you would be so proud of your boy…he thinks that he hides that gentle heart and that kindness and that his macho BS totally stops it spilling out around the edges._

"You taught Sam everything about adult relationships," John emphasised quietly. "Sam and Jessica Moore lived in the same apartment and shared the same bed for nearly four years. Do you seriously think they limited themselves to holding hands and heavy petting?"

_Sam had lived with Jessica for nearly four years_…Dean had never before comprehended the fact; he had never had a relationship that lasted longer than about four weeks…He never could, because the first, last and always most important thing in his life had been his brother and since Dean liked women with a hefty IQ as well as cup size, it had usually taken his girlfriends all of about five minutes to suss that truth and five more minutes to decide they would not tolerate perpetually being a distant fourth after Sam, Dad and Hunting; inevitably sooner or later he had been ditched for a guy who wasn't quite as imbued with bad-boy sexiness, but who would place_ her_ at the _top_ of his priority list.

"No, sir…" he frowned, "so that's what linked Jessica to…?" even now, he couldn't quite bring himself to mention 'mom' in front of his father.

"Mary…Max Miller's mother…Jessica…and there have been others. Different ages, different life circumstances, different skin colours, different religions and social strata, but the one commonality was that all of them were either mothers or of reasonable child-bearing age." John's lips compressed with remembered grief and rage, "Plus the manner of their murders – all were slashed across the _abdomen_…"

"And if you want to kill somebody fast and without giving them _any_ opportunity to fight back, you go for the throat." Dean nodded to himself; what he knew about human anatomy could fit onto a pinhead, but the abdomen and especially that of women, was protected by a very strong, very thick wall of muscle, fat and the pelvic bones. Often, even very serious abdominal wounds were survivable – had it not been for 'pinned to the ceiling and engulfed in exploding inferno', Mom and Jessica and the other victims could probably have been saved with prompt medical attention.

"So the demon killed my kid as well." Sam said quietly from the doorway.

**Chapter 16**

John watched his younger son soberly as Sam came fully into the room. Dean looked at his brother anxiously, but Sam was calm though sombre rather than angry at their father for his revelations.

"Sam…I may be wrong…and at that stage…Jessica herself wouldn't have known even if she was..." John suggested quietly.

Sam came and sat down on the chair on the door side of the bed, staring at his hands for several moments. "Guess it's a good thing I'd already bought the engagement ring then."

They flinched and Sam looked at his father, "If you're right, then I have to say it implies an ineptitude that this thing's never shown as far as I can see."

"Huh?" Dean murmured.

Sam shot his brother what managed to be a faintly whimsical smile despite the tremendous shock he'd received. He'd only turned back to the hospital room to ask if his father wanted another cup of coffee and had had been rooted to the spot on the verge of opening the door when he'd heard Dean's opening question and his father's response.

"I have these…abilities. So did Max Miller. The notion seems to be that Jessica was killed because little Dean – or Deanna –" he didn't notice his brother's reaction to the casually uttered name, "was going to have daddy's whammy and then some?"

"That's mostly my angle, yes," John conceded.

"Then we know it's misfired at least twice. Mrs Miller had already had Psychic-Psycho Boy when it killed her. And why did it wait until _after_ I was born before trying to deep-fry me and my nursery?"

"You were unexpected…" John uttered his theory in the stark quiet, "the Millers had been told they were infertile…"

"And you never intended to have me?" Sam instantly picked up on what his father's phraseology…_unexpected_.

"Wow, was I _that_ bad?" Dean made the quip with comically widened eyes and exaggerated '_lil' ole' me?_' mock-innocence.

Both Sam and John saw through him like glass to the pain and the incipient sense of rejection underneath as once again Dean believed himself to be 'the freak', the one 'more trouble than he was worth'. John felt the invisible wave of anger rolling towards him from Sam's direction and once again felt that tingle of almost-electricity in the air as the wall picture – an uninspired and inappropriate seascape for a landlocked farming State – shivered slightly as if contemplating coming off the wall and clobbering him.

So he laughed, genuinely, and even more so at their astonished faces. "Are you kidding? Oh, Dean…it was exactly the _opposite _problem – you were everything I wanted in a son."

"And that was a _bad _thing?" Sam gave Dean a sidelong '_okay this is whack even for him_, _right?_' glance to which Dean equally silently replied, '_You're telling me, bro'. I think Dad may actually be losing it…_'

Not in this lifetime, boys. Composing himself, John said. "It's simple – I was hoist by my own petard. _Be careful what you wish for, because you might get it_…and I did."

"You wanted Dean to be…like Dean." Sam said cautiously. "Well, yeah…that's insane."

"Hey!"

John ignored the indignant protest. "Look, you know I met your mom when I was in the Marines, right?"

"Yes, sir," they chorused.

"One of her girlfriends was a uniform groupie," John muttered with remembered distaste, "but Mary had no time for that macho military BS. Oh she liked me, and she was fond of me, but no way was she going to let herself fall for a soldier with an over-developed sense of self-confidence. I was her final fling, her own bit of future bad-boy nostalgia. Sure I was good in bed, but –"

"Dad!" again with the chorusing, "TMI!"

"But then she would find someone who thought with what was between their ears rather than their legs for the long haul." John finished. Despite the underlying seriousness, he grinned; for too long these memories had tortured his dreams but now the reminiscences were sweet with recalled affection, "I'll never forget the look on her face when she opened the door and there I was in that ghastly demob suit I'd picked up at JC Penney's on the way. She couldn't believe it when I said I'd left the Corps. She asked me why and I said, "'because if I'd stayed you wouldn't have married me.'"

They remained respectfully silent as he savoured the moment.

He blinked and focussed on Dean. "When the doctors told us they thought you were a boy I was cock-a-hoop. You'd have thought I'd invented fatherhood. I went around telling everyone how my boy would be a real chip off the block…like that movie...a genuine mini-me. That was when your mom told me to shut up else I might get what I was wishing for. Boy, was she _waaaay_ smarter than me."

"But I wasn't bad?" Dean asked the question with a sort of cautious hope in his tone.

"You were everything I'd wanted you to be – _before_ you were born at any rate." John chuckled again. "It was like you were turbo-charged from birth. Most first labours can take a minimum of twelve hours. From the first contraction hitting Mary to you being born was about twenty-three minutes, and there was no smacked bottom for Dean Thomas Winchester. They knew your lungs were working in Paraguay."

"Yeah, he's never shut up since," Sam commented; he grinned as Dean silently mouthed 'bitch' at him and he mouthed back 'jerk'.

"You gotta realise, me and your mom were in our twenties when Dean was born," John explained, "We were young, healthy, eager for the whole Mom & Dad experience…and we were exhausted. You were an insomniac from birth –"

Dean flinched slightly, but John saw it.

"But you were a great baby," he emphasised firmly. "Most insomniac babies whine or grizzle or are cranky. You didn't sleep but you didn't fuss; we'd hear you moving in the small hours and when we got up you'd be there playing with your toys in the cot or just grinning generally at the world. You were trying to crawl at two months and were trying to walk at six months, and when you could…"

"What'd he do?" Sam urged his father gleefully, soaking up every word like a dry sponge; John Winchester had never been this open, this communicative about 'Before', when he was just a normal husband and father with a normal life.

"Mary said she was going to superglue you to the floor as it was the only way to keep you in one spot," John told his blushing elder son. "When you were two, you watched _The Wizard of Oz_ and then we found you trying to crawl out onto the roof to play at being a flying monkey…when you were three you saw _Mary Poppins_ and the next day Mary walked into the room to see your little legs dangling from the chimney because you were trying to crawl up the flue to find Dick van Dyke."

Sam laughed – a real, genuine, 24-karat belly laugh. "Awesome!"

"Shut up, Sam," Dean's face was beetroot but the glare he gave his brother had no heat – it made Sam happy and laugh to hear about his toddler mishaps, and any humiliation of himself was therefore acceptable and of no importance.

_But it is important, and that you accept it's not is part of the problem_, John thought to himself as he watched Dean from the corner of his eye. Ruthlessly he shelved those thoughts – this was not the time.

Sam, seeing the faint hurt in Dean's eyes, sobered up quickly; did Dean really think he was laughing at his _expense_? Later, in a few days, when Dad was inevitably gone again after this 'playing the father' interlude wore thin, Sam would revisit this discussion and make it clear that he was laughing _with_ and never _at_.

"During the night your mom used to elbow me awake," John confessed, "and when I whined she used to point out that I'd wanted a son just like me, "'So suck it up and Semper Fie, Winchester.'" You had more energy than both of us put together." He looked at Dean, allowing his deep love to show on his face, "We wanted to give you the time and attention that you deserved."

"And you were too exhausted to cope with a second Dean." Sam put in dryly.

"That too," John conceded drolly.

"What changed your mind?" Dean asked when it became obvious Sam wasn't going to.

For the first time in the history of the world, John Winchester looked sheepish. "We didn't, exactly. That's what I meant about unexpected. Like I said, safe sex is only ever _mostly _safe. Abstinence is the only certain guarantee of non-parenthood."

Neither son needed the exact details, whether wonky contraceptive, split condom or just momentary carelessness; a single spermatozoon deposited at the top of a woman's thigh _outside _the vagina still had a realistic chance of making the (to it) 70 minute journey to the womb, and one single drop of semen contained on average over 200 million spermatozoa.

"And you were worried I'd be a hyperactive brat too?" Sam deliberately drawled, smirking at Dean.

"For most of the pregnancy the doctors didn't know whether you were Samantha or Sam," John replied obliquely. "But if we'd known what would happen when you were born, we'd have started trying for another baby when Dean was about two days old!"

"So I _was_ angelic," Sam smugly declared.

"Hardly," John countered drolly deciding it was time for a little proxy payback on Dean's behalf, "considering you wailed like a banshee non-stop for the first three hours of your life and used to wait until you'd just been put in a fresh diaper before filling it again three seconds later, accompanied by loud farts."

Now it was Sam's turn to be scarlet as Dean sniggered.

"…but you calmed Dean down and seemed to have switched off his turbo…and you did save Dean's life when you were a couple of months old."

"I did? How?" Sam straightened in his chair; his earliest conscious memories were of Dean holding him, feeding or playing with him…_I carried you out the front door_…he had never been able to equal that.

"I don't remember that," Dean huffed under his breath.

"You were only four yourself," John answered anyway. "One day Mary put Sam on the couch for a moment, when suddenly he freaked. I'm talking full-on baby tantrum," John told Sam, "Your legs were pumping, your arms were thrashing, your face was beetroot and your lungs were going like warning klaxons. You scared your mom out of her wits and you wouldn't stop."

They waited respectfully as he momentarily dwelled on the reminiscence.

"Anyway, Dean came in from outside at a fast clip and you shut up like someone had hit a MUTE button. Dean clambered on the couch and picked you up and you just gurgled at him as if to say, '_Me? That racket?_ Your mom said it was enough to give her a complex."

"I have a way with kids," Dean said with mock humility.

"Then Mary went out into the front yard for something and noticed the gate was open. She went down to shut it…" John nodded at Dean, "and then she saw your toy dumper truck in the gutter about three yards down the sidewalk and realised you'd gone out."

"I don't remember," Dean shook his head as he tried in vain to recall the memory.

"At the time our street was very dangerous," John explained, "drivers used it as a rat run to avoid a toll road and the idiots frequently tore down it as if they thought it was the Indy Car 500. But you heard Sam and came back."

He fell silent and for long moments none of them spoke until Sam pondered, "And that's when the demon must have found out about me and…"

John shrugged and cleared his throat. "It's possible…although…" he sighed, "we were worried about sibling rivalry but you two had such a positive relationship that we'd already decided to try for Samantha when you a week old." His voice faded with old regret…he would have given a great deal for a daughter with Mary's hair and bright eyes and that pugnacious tilt to her chin…

"Genetics," Sam was unaware he'd uttered the word aloud until he looked up and found both father and brother regarding him quizzically.

"There was an article on hereditary traits in a magazine," he explained, "parents pass some dominant genetic tendencies to their children regardless of gender, but if the child is the same sex as the parent, the chances of that genetic tendency being particularly prominent are increased. My powers are strong as it is and I'm Mary Winchester's _son_…" he looked over at Dean, "…our sister's whammy would probably have been off the scale."

For a moment there almost seemed to be a shade in the room, the ephemeral form of a Winchester who never had the chance to be. Dean remained silent as the ramifications burned in his brain. Maybe just like Jessica, two people had died in the Winchester house on that terrible night.

_Concluded in Chapter 17…_

© 2006, Catherine D Stewart


	9. Chapter 17

_**Disclaimer, Summary & Rating:** _Please see Chapter 1.

**MILES TO GO BEFORE I SLEEP**

**Chapter 17**

"_Caaaaaawwffeeee_."

The Rehab Therapy clinic was the on the ground floor of the hospital, facing the picturesque vista of the woods and overlooking a garden, with big windows that let in a lot of light and lots of space between the equipment. At the moment there weren't that many patients in, which was probably for the best since those that were present were watching the antics of the Winchester boys rather than doing much of their own therapy.

Sam stood about six feet in front of Dean. In one hand he held a typical glass pot of freshly filtered coffee and in the other a large white enamel mug. With an evil grin he had slowly poured the steaming, rich black liquid into the mug and uttered the drawn-out declaration. Now he took a slurping sip and smacked his lips together with exaggerated relish, "Haaaa-tm-tm-tm."

Though Mac the physiotherapist waited nearby with deceptive nonchalance just in case, Dean had excelled in his twelve days of physiotherapy. Due to the injuries being to both left side limbs, he regrettably had a tendency to still sort of shuffle-lurch, which made him resemble nothing so much as a zombie in one of those schlock-horror B-movies. However he was improving almost minute by minute, as demonstrated by the fairly fast way in which he moved towards his brother with clearly homicidal intent, baring his lips in a silent snarl as Sam tauntingly inched backwards to maintain distance whilst taking another slurping sip of the coffee and repeating the hyperbolic lip-sucking and sounds of gustatory delight.

John Winchester also watched from further away, seated with a cup of coffee near the windows (ruefully he had to admit that much of Dean's caffeine addiction came straight from his donation of DNA). Thanks to the doctors, but much more so to Sam's obsessive – ruthless – determination to help his brother, Dean would soon literally walk out of the hospital as 'good as new'.

That meant that at this stage, John was increasingly superfluous to requirements. His aim in coming had to been to provide a focal point for Sam's frustration, to ensure that the boy never consciously understood the sheer depth of his absolute dominion over his brother, which Dean would otherwise have unwittingly betrayed in a thousand ways because of his enforced helplessness. But Dean would kill himself in an attempt to never show 'weakness' in front of his father, and Sam had taken Dean's bullish attitude at face value.

And of course on top of that, it was simply too dangerous for all of them. John was acutely aware that he had survived Chicago only due to the resilience and resourcefulness of his sons and he'd never been as proud of them – or as filled with longing to stay. But Meg Masters and her ilk were on the prowl, temporarily down but far, far from out. It would take them time, but sooner rather than later they would light on the three men if he lingered here too long, and wackiness would ensue.

As a trio, the Winchesters were just too distinct and conspicuous, whereas separated they merely blended into the background; John was just one more middle-aged drifter, an itinerant-labourer hobo unremarkable amongst the hundreds who drifted across the continental United States. Likewise there was nothing to distinguish Sam and Dean from hundreds of other young Americans who did the 'road trip' thing before or after college, either as couples or siblings or buddies.

There was a soft 'clunk' sound. Sam had finally stopped shuffling backwards and had placed the coffee pot on a side table as Dean reached where he was standing. Changing his grip on the coffee mug so he was holding it by the rim and base with the handle facing away from him, Sam remained still and curved his left arm around the bottom of Dean's back, bracing himself so Dean could use him as a leaning post. Determinedly pretending Sam wasn't there even as he leaned into him, Dean reached up with both hands and as Sam held it steady he curled his fingers tightly round the mug handle, supporting the base lightly with his still weakened left hand. Once he had securely grasped the mug Sam released his own hold and Dean slowly brought the mug to his mouth, holding it in both hands, taking a sip and closing his eyes with an ecstatic sigh.

Sam carefully remained still, placing his right hand lightly just on the back of Dean's right shoulder as he kept his left arm around Dean's waist to help support him as necessary; Sam's tender actions were somewhat ruined by his wide, smirking grin as Dean, utterly ignoring him, continued his almost orgasmic communion with the coffee.

John watched them sombrely, knowing that nobody in the room, including Sam and Dean, was aware of just how much Sam was unconsciously using his telekinetic abilities to assist him physically in supporting his brother's bodyweight. Even a small child was heavier than he or she looked, and a person who, for whatever reason was unable to support their own bodyweight, for example by being unconscious, was very much like a sack of potatoes or a very heavy rag-doll. You tried to pick them up and they rolled and flopped and oozed and slid all over the place, like trying to carry Jello in your bare hands.

When he left here in a couple of days he would risk a visit to Lawrence to see Missouri. Of all the help his dear friend had provided him over the years, she had never done him a greater service than the straight talk and sage counsel she'd given him with the truth about his sons.

It had been hard to accept – in some ways it still was. A part of him would always resent the fact that he couldn't have the strong, positive relationship he'd always wanted with Sam. But a good parent did what was best, not what was easiest. Besides, he'd had to start rectifying matters in short order; Missouri had given him that stern talking to a few weeks after the fire but at the time he'd been in no shape to deal with more revelations than those she'd already dropped on him from a great height regarding what really lurked out there in the shadows.

That little actions could have profound consequences was truism bordering on the cliché, but of course many people who said it didn't heed it, as John knew only too well. On that terrible night of Mary's murder he had given Sam to Dean…who had never given him back.

Although that wasn't quite accurate, was it, John? He could almost hear the tart question aloud, and after 22 years his mind could still conjure Mary's voice with perfect nuance – she would have folded her arms and looked at her husband and raised her eyebrows (one of his favourite goofy things about her was her secret yearning to be able to do the one-eyebrow-raising Vulcan thing but she could never manage it) and he would have caved in to her gentle yet inexorable expression of '_John Dean Winchester do you really think I'm buying your line of BS?_'

At first he had simply been incapable…of pretty much anything. In those first forty-eight hours after That Night he had breathed and slept and walked only because the human brain had a neat autonomic function back-up, a biological 'autopilot' failsafe that carried someone at the ultimate edge through the maelstrom and afterwards they had no clear idea how they'd done it. He'd made catatonia look like hysteria.

And then he'd been…unwilling. He had been sucked down into despair and depression, an inky whirlpool of hopeless, rage and yes, resentment. Deep, deep down where he could barely acknowledge the hateful emotion, his pain had bubbled and festered. Why did it have to be _Mary_ that died and not…Sam – or Dean. Mary was his world, Mary was his queen. Mary was irreplaceable, _but we could always have had another baby_, his grief had railed. He had been unable to even look at the two little boys without feeling the irrational urge to strike them…like the poem said, '_thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears_'. Oh yes, John Winchester was intimately familiar with what Winston Churchill had called his 'Black Dog', when the world was nothing but grey and it hurt so much and you were so tired, all the time; when getting out of bed was a feat more arduous than climbing Everest, when it was so much easier to be finished, to be done, when that little voice in your head whispered that it would best to just stop…that if you pressed your foot down on that pedal instead of this one at that bad bend where the road was always greasy then there would be no more effort, no more struggle.

Back during John's own college days he'd had to take summer courses for extra credits due to a little too much Sophomore-year socialising, and out of vindictiveness on his college tutor's part had been dumped in a Classic English Lit class. He was going to be a _Marine_, for crying out loud…he had no interest in wandering clouds or daffodils. Adding insult to injury, the Lit class had been at 9:00am on a Monday, and he had spent two hours of his pre-Junior year summer dissecting the poetry of some woebegone chick named Edna St. Vincent Millay.

_'Where you used to be there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in daytime, and falling into at night.' _John had been thrown out of that class for suggesting what Edie needed was to get laid, but a few months after Mary's death, he'd left the boys with some neighbour and gone out into the countryside with the express purpose of unloading his service revolver into his skull, when that poem had suddenly popped into his head, and he had realised that Edna St. Vincent Millay was the brightest person on the planet bar none. Like him, her life had sucked, like Mary she had died young…but even after writing that poem, from somewhere she'd found the strength to go on, to stay in the world despite the unendurable pain of doing so. How could he do any less, especially when he had his boys depending on him?

He'd turned the car around and slunk back to Lawrence where he found Missouri Moseley waiting for him with blood in her eyes and fire on her tongue to drag him kicking and screaming back into the world. But by the time he'd crawled out of his fugue state, it had been too late to reclaim the position he'd effectively abrogated to Dean the night Mary was killed.

As he'd observed his young sons, Missouri's explanations and warnings had become clear and he'd put things together. Five weeks after the open gate incident, Dean was supposed to have gone on a week-long camping trip with his schoolmates. The trip had been organised for over a year and the little boy was eagerly looking forward to it, especially as Daddy had given him his cool Swiss Army knife from the Marines and helped him practice putting up tents and cooking sausages over a fire like they used to do at weekends together before Sammy was born, 'camping out' in the back yard while Mary firmly declined the invitation and remained asleep in the comfy centrally-heated bedroom of the house. Not that Dean had minded, 'cause Mommy was only a girl and camping with no toilets – but spiders - was cool boys' stuff.

As he did every night Dean had gone into the nursery and kissed the baby goodnight on the forehead, promising to tell Sammy all about what he'd done when he came back and promising he wouldn't forget Sammy, even though a week was 'ages and ages' of time. But as he left, he nursery door had swung shut too fast and trapped his hand against the doorjamb. Understandably, Dean had screamed the house down, so had Sam, even Mary had lost her cool as John hustled their quartet into the car and drove hell for leather to the ER.

The paediatrician had been kind and jolly and reassured Dean in John's embrace as the little boy curled up with his hand clutched to his chest. X-rays had shown that there was no bone fracture and there seemed to be no nerve damage, but his hand was badly bruised and swelled up like a small black balloon. However, camping and a boy with a bandaged, immobile hand were mutually exclusive terms. Dean had never had the chance to go again, of course.

A few days before John would take the boys and finally leave Lawrence forever, Dean had chastised a naughty Sam, by then of an age where he could crawl, and as punishment had taken away from him the candy bar he'd given him. A little later a boiling hot pan of tomato soup had spilled off the stove, fortunately when Dean was several feet away from it.

At the time of each incident, they had simply been forgotten, but after his suicide decision and with Missouri's counsel echoing in his ears, John had looked with fresh eyes; those occurrences had taken on new, sinister significance. Like the germinating seeds of a poison tree he had seen the petulance and spite taking root in Sammy, the malice and selfishness like creeping, smothering vine, the toddler's increasing whining sulkiness and above all Sam's excessive possessiveness toward his brother and his jealousy of anything that took Dean's attention and time away from him.

There was a reason that spoiled children were called _spoiled_; like rotted fruit they were rancid and soft and fit only for the trash. Small children were utterly innocent, but they were also the most inherently egocentric creatures on the planet; they lived in a universe of one, inhabited by a solitary deity, 'I'. They greedily accepted unconditional love as a divine right, but wanted no truck with its responsibilities. It was known that you had to teach children racism and bigotry as you had to teach them to read and write, but not as widely accepted in today's liberal ideology that by the same token you had to teach them how to love and share and care as you taught them mathematics and how to tie their shoelaces.

And Dean had no defence. He was like open rural country to his brother. Against Sam he built no walls and raised no fences…he could be cherished or destroyed according to Sam's whim…and thanks to Missouri, John had recognised that in time. She had been clear: Sam's abilities would probably go dormant in his childhood for a time – but there was no guarantee that they would, and at any rate, he was so gifted that eventually he would come fully 'online', probably during puberty or his early twenties…

_And I'm a candle next to a star compared to that boy, John Winchester, you hear me?_ For an instant Missouri was almost there with him in the Rehab room, hands on hips as she had stood when she'd torn a strip off him that night, her anger making her lyrical accent more pronounced with the vehemence of her rebuke:

_An' unless yawl get your big ole' head outta that scrawny white ass o' yours, Dean is gonna be thuh one payin' thu' price. Sam's not just the F-18 o' psychics, he's gonna be a powerful telekinetic too! Probably even telepathy eventually! Yawl tell me right now, John Dean Winchester, how is Dean supposed ta protect hisself from a spoiled brat of a brother who can throw him into walls while standin' thuh other side o' the room, or a bullyin', merciless sibling who could beat him with a baseball bat just by thinkin' about it, or cut him with a knife yet stay beyond Dean's reach? Yawl think you're thuh only one who sees how devoted he is to that baby? Yawl think he's gonna fight back when Sam starts manipulatin' him 'n' a-hurtin' him? Dean loves that boy unconditionally, without reservation an' without hesitation an' eventually that's gonna get him dead – its called domestic violence and it ain't always a husband and wife deal. _

While he might need the occasional slap upside the head, John was not dilatory once he 'got' it. He had grabbed the 'emotional Paraquat' and he had exterminated the blooming arrogance and pulled out spitefulness and truculence by the roots in his younger son. Fortunately out-plotting a toddler was not that hard for any reasonably bright adult and he had succeeded in his damage control.

Sam had won the war for Dean's love long before John opened the hostilities; all John had been able to do was fight a rearguard action on his elder son's behalf, but it had worked. He had made Sam fight for every victory, every extra ounce of further hold over Dean and he had succeeded in protecting one son from the other. The Sam Winchester not ten feet away from him was a compassionate, principled youth, a young man of morality and integrity, compassionate, honourable and decent.

Above all he was clueless. John hadn't been surprised when Sam's abilities activated fully following Jessica Moore's murder, but the thought that he could use his increasing power to subjugate Dean, to force his brother's submission to his wishes and whims had never once entered Sam's head – in fact, had never even come _near_ to entering his head. Sam's dominion over Dean was absolute; his saving grace was that he was utterly unaware of the fact.

Not once had John ever hesitated, ever doubted, ever wavered, in his absolute faith that Dean would willingly and unhesitatingly kill to protect Sam and die to save him. John looked over to where Sam continued to tenderly torment Dean about the coffee, his demeanour that of a tigress with a wobbly cub. Pity the idiot that tried to hurt Dean with Sam on the same continent. Now for the first time, John found he had equal faith in that Sam would do the same for Dean.

Of course Sam _would_ use his powers against Dean. It was inevitable. Not because he was that spoiled bully that he could have ended up as but because his abilities were a natural extension of him, like his brown hair and his sweet grin. It was a fact that siblings squabbled; brothers fought with brothers, sisters argued with sisters, there was yelling and finger-wagging and prodding and hair-tugging and occasionally fisticuffs.

John wouldn't be there when the fight happened, would probably never be told about it, but he knew his boys and he could see it as clear as crystal without any precognitive predilection on his part. They would be having some snarky rant about some petty triviality – McDonald's® versus Taco Bell® or something. Sam was too much like John in that when mad he yelled and stomped and waved his arms like he was conducting some invisible orchestra; probably why their fights over the years had been so spectacular. Dean was pure Mary; when mad she would not engage, she would softly hiss for John to get the hell out of her face and just walk away, slamming the door and marching off to cool down and mutter _sotto voce _invective (the chief epithet of which seemed to be '_men!_') even as he tended to follow and hover and try to put over his (i.e., the right) side of the argument. Just like his mom, when furious Dean sought space, sought control, he disengaged from the jerk yelling in his face.

But Sam wouldn't allow that. Sure, Sam had abandoned Dean when he'd gone to college, determined to assuage his craving for a normal life, there was no sauce for the gander as for the goose here. While Sam had left Dean, he would not tolerate Dean leaving him, even just to stomp out into a motel parking lot. The two of them would be arguing in some crappy motel room about what to have for dinner and finally Dean would get to the 'hit Sam or get out' stage and he would turn on his heel to storm out, to spend the night in the back seat of his car if he had to so as to avoid strangling his infuriating jerk of a baby brother.

And Sam would stop him. He'd use his telekinetic abilities to keep the door tightly shut or just hold Dean in place so he couldn't move. The exact instance was irrelevant, what was important was that Sam's actions would be followed by immediate, and most vitally of all, _sincere_ contrition, acknowledgement that to abuse his gift and his brother in such a way was unconscionable.

Dean would forgive him, because there was nothing that Sam could do to Dean that he wouldn't forgive, and that would make Sam realise that the great power he possessed, the greatest gift he had was not clairvoyance, or telekinesis, or even telepathy, but that he was fortunate enough to be the recipient of unconditional love. There was one person in the world who would do anything and everything for him, who would place his life, his welfare and his safety above any other consideration including self-preservation. It was a priceless treasure and a sacred trust, _and God help you, boy, if you should ever betray it._

John glanced at the wall clock, seeing how it was incredibly nearly lunch time. "It's a long, long road, my love…and there're miles to go before I sleep," he said softly to himself and to Mary, since he'd never stopped conversing with his wife in twenty-two years; it was the least of his eccentricities.

"…and I got the mechanics to take out that crappy cassette deck and put in a CD player, so now we get to ditch the mullet rock…" Sam was teasing, even as he still embraced his brother.

But not right now…Evil and its manic minions like Meg Masters could wait a while. Now John Winchester was going to have another cup of that very fine coffee and savour this day with his boys.

_The End_

© 2006, Catherine D Stewart

**Author's Note: **I know I said that **_Living La Vida Loca_** was a one-off, but I got the idea for this…there may be more, there may not. What if John Winchester wasn't a feckless, inadequate, abusive or emotionally crippled father but a loving parent who like all such sacrificed his own chance to be Sam's favourite in order to protect both his children? In many TV shows around now, dads are dummies (if present at all), moms are smart saints and kids have the Wisdom of Solomon. But reality isn't like that. Children/teenagers, even 20-somethings, don't have the intellect and life experience to be that shrewd.

I think I understand the 'Dean' character. My 'Sam' came within a whisker of being stillborn and hurtled through life secure in the big sister that stood between him and the world. Small kids are egocentric and inherently selfish. They take but do not instinctively give. What would _I_ have done with a sibling who could pin me against a wall without coming near me, or who could throw heavy objects at me from far across the room where I could not reach him? My baby brother _was_ jealous of anything other than him that had my time or attention. My parents did not allow their cherished son to become spoiled and a bully because they knew nobody was more vulnerable to such tyranny than I. So this story was born with the idea that John Winchester was as smart as my dad was. I can't speculate on where the season(s) will go plot wise, but until now Supernatural has always focussed on the danger to 'Sam' whereas I have always seen 'Dean' as the truly vulnerable one. As a final note, some of the 'baby' escapades mentioned are taken from my childhood, for instance I was born as and continue to be an insomniac – sorry if they are overly sentimental. I also suffer from depression, which is a hugely not-fun deal.


End file.
